Chalkbeat

Chicago wants schools to adopt a new $135 million curriculum. It is getting high marks and pushback.

2023-03-31T11:00:00+00:00

When Andrew Avila landed his first teaching job at Chicago’s Bronzeville Classical Elementary in 2021, he got to work creating lesson plans for his students, who would be returning to in-person learning amid the pandemic.

The newly minted science teacher had access to Skyline, a new online curriculum created by Chicago Public Schools. It offered a wealth of materials and ideas connecting science to his students’ experiences. A lesson on thermal energy, for example, explained how air conditioner units increase summertime temperatures in Chicago.

Chicago teacher Andrew Avila, who uses Skyline at Bronzeville Classical Elementary, has occasionally felt overwhelmed by the volume of resources on the platform.

But at times, Avila felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of lessons and other materials, housed on a digital platform that could be tough to navigate.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m drinking water from a firehose because there are so many resources I can turn to,” Avila said.

CPS is betting big that Skyline — the unprecedented $135 million trove of lessons in math, reading, science, social studies, and other subjects — will help students bounce back from COVID’s profound academic damage.

The curriculum remains voluntary for schools, but the district has started pressing campuses that have not yet adopted Skyline to prove they have other quality curriculums in place.

An analysis by Chalkbeat and WBEZ found that roughly half of the district’s campuses report using Skyline for at least two subjects, with the highest adoption rates at schools that serve predominantly low-income Black students. In other words, Skyline is shaping the learning of tens of thousands of students, including some of Chicago’s most vulnerable, amid a high-stakes pandemic recovery.

District leaders say that by ensuring students get lessons that reflect their grade levels, Skyline helps teachers speed up learning rather than constantly backtracking to material students should have learned earlier. Some educators praise Skyline for offering rich resources that help novice educators such as Avila hit the ground running and seasoned ones rejuvenate their teaching.

But others say the curriculum is not ready for prime time. A wonky digital platform can make it hard for teachers to navigate a slew of lessons and assignments that many say can be overwhelming. In some subjects, student materials include dense blocks of text with few visuals that can especially challenge struggling learners.

The district says it is continually strengthening the curriculum — created in-house with help from several curriculum companies — with input from educators and students, including recent improvements to the online platform. Still, some educators remain wary of a centralized curriculum in a district that has traditionally given teachers leeway to design their own lessons.

Getting the Skyline rollout right is enormously important, say curriculum experts such as David Steiner at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Education. He notes that many teachers are routinely pulling materials off the web, acting “like DJs for playlists of instructional materials” — a task that’s unfair to lay on overworked educators and one that leaves students’ education to chance.

“In this moment of fragility and uncertainty, we need to reduce the zone of ‘anything goes’ and chaos, and, ‘This is my unique curriculum and my unique classroom,’” he said.

How a uniquely Chicago curriculum originated

In Chicago, wealthier schools have often been able to buy quality learning resources while low-income campuses made do with cobbled-together or outdated materials and books.

Former Chicago schools chief Janice Jackson saw a solution: a curriculum bank filled with high-quality lessons in every subject. She said it could tackle massive disparities in academic achievement across the city’s 500-some district-run campuses. What’s more, by developing it in-house, experts could tie in Chicago’s history and present day, making it more engaging for students.

The district enlisted five companies to help develop and implement the lessons and built-in assessments, with input from some Chicago teachers. It came to draw heavily on federal COVID-19 relief dollars to foot the six-year, $135 million bill. Ultimately, Skyline — and the technology it relies on — became some of the priciest items the district bought from outside vendors with pandemic recovery dollars.

Chicago formally launched Skyline in the summer of 2021, a couple of weeks before Jackson stepped down.

Javee Hernandez teaches her sixth grade students social studies using the new Skyline curriculum at Bronzeville Classical Elementary School.

That summer, Javee Hernandez — a veteran social studies teacher at Bronzeville Classical whose classroom is across the hall from Avila’s — joined principal Nicole Spicer and other school leaders in deciding whether to adopt the new curriculum. Bronzeville Classical, a test-in school on the South Side where students learn a grade ahead of their age, had opened just a few years earlier, in 2018.

The administration felt the school’s math and reading coursework was strong, but social studies and science could benefit from a revamp. Enter Skyline.

“This was a free, high-quality, rigorous option,” said Spicer. “Skyline became a resource that really was a no-brainer for us.”

The district has offered schools like Bronzeville a slew of incentives to opt into Skyline: free books and math supplies, dollars to spend on science lab equipment, expanded access to technology. But even as Bronzeville has embraced Skyline, other schools have been more cautious.

Schools skipping Skyline must defend their choice

One elementary school principal who left the district last year said she was asked to make a case that her school’s English language arts curriculum passed muster.

She and her teachers largely agreed the school would benefit from adopting Skyline in the later grades; after two years of pandemic schooling, educators felt drained and ready for a break from the labor-intensive process of designing lessons from scratch. But in the earlier grades, the principal compiled test scores and other data to argue that her teachers should be allowed to continue using their own lessons. The district agreed.

“They don’t come out and say, ‘You have to do it,’” the principal said. “But if you can’t prove your school is using a high-quality curriculum, then the pressure is on to adopt Skyline.”

Chalkbeat and WBEZ are not naming several school leaders who did not have district permission to speak with the media; the former principal asked to remain anonymous to avoid burning bridges with the district.

A high school principal said she asked most of her teachers to take last school year to “tinker” with Skyline and do the extensive professional development the district offers. But she has mandated it for a few teachers who did not have robust lesson plans and struggled in the classroom.

This year, the district asked schools to evaluate their curriculums across the board against a district rubric that defined what made for a quality curriculum and recently shared results with principals: Roughly 20% of campuses do not have quality curriculums in reading, math, or social studies, and about 10% do not have one in science.

Mary Beck, the district’s head of teaching and learning, said the district is now working with those campuses to make a plan.

“If you don’t have a high-quality curriculum, what’s your plan to get to a high-quality curriculum?” she said. “Skyline is obviously the example, but not the only example.”

The number of schools adopting Skyline is growing each year. As of January, as many as 432 schools were using the curriculum for at least one subject, roughly 83% of all district schools.

In elementary schools, the English curriculum is the most popular and math is the least (not including world languages, which are not offered by all campuses).

Majority Black schools have adopted the curriculum at the highest rates. Campuses that serve mostly white students — only about two dozen districtwide — have been slowest to embrace Skyline, Chalkbeat and WBEZ found.

In Chicago, 432 schools have adopted Skyline for at least one subject, with majority Black schools using the curriculum at the highest rates.

Skyline adoption has also been slower at high schools, though some high-needs South and West side campuses were early adopters across all subjects.

A couple of principals told Chalkbeat and WBEZ they opted in mostly just to get the free resources from the district.

The high school principal said her school adopted Skyline in all subjects, but buy-in varies.

On one end of the spectrum, science teachers at her school really like the curriculum, which draws heavily on the well-respected curriculum called Amplify Science, and have rolled it out faithfully.

On the other end, English teachers dabbled but ultimately returned mostly to lessons they had developed previously. Social science teachers found the materials too challenging for struggling readers; some are picking and choosing parts to incorporate.

Some teachers struggle to navigate Skyline

Caprice Phillips-Mitchell, the chair of the Chicago Teachers Union elementary steering committee and a kindergarten teacher at Fort Dearborn Elementary School on the South Side, said she hears from a number of teachers who are unhappy with Skyline. And this school year, she experienced some of the problems herself.

Phillips-Mitchell said parts of the Skyline curriculum are too challenging for students or require prior knowledge teachers need to fill in. Because online lessons and assignments are not “user friendly,” teachers say they are printing out the lessons and making copies. Sometimes when teachers try to go back to a lesson, it is gone and replaced with something new.

She said her school was told it must adopt Skyline. That meant she had to stop using an English language arts curriculum she and other teachers liked. Phillips-Mitchell says she believes schools serving low-income students of color are facing more pressure to adopt Skyline.

“Why give anyone a curriculum that’s not really ready to be rolled out?” she said. “Do you do it in some of these Black and brown communities that may not have such a voice?”

The Chicago Teachers Union applauds the district’s effort to create a curriculum bank. But chief of staff Jen Johnson said it is problematic that some teachers are being told that it’s mandatory, while district leaders insist it is not.

“The unevenness of implementation means that teachers are experiencing dramatically different messages,” she said. “We do not support this being some kind of citywide mandated curriculum that takes away important teacher autonomy.”

Johnson said staff need more planning time to consider and digest a new curriculum in order to buy into it and implement it well. She often hears about problems with the online interface or mistakes in the materials. For example, one social studies lesson somehow omitted an entire state.

Teachers and educators across the district interviewed by Chalkbeat and WBEZ echoed the concerns about the platform and what many said is an overwhelming amount of resources. The platform is designed by a company named SAFARI Montage.

The former elementary school principal said she understands the good intention of offering teachers a wealth of resources to choose from, but “Skyline is overly packed with lessons. It’s really too much information for teachers.”

A couple of educators told Chalkbeat and WBEZ that because the Skyline platform was frustrating to use, they instead accessed math materials directly on the website for Illustrative Math, the curriculum that the district adapted for Skyline — essentially defeating the purpose of having a district math curriculum.

A current West Side elementary principal said his teachers largely moved away from using the Skyline reading curriculum in the early grades — with his blessing — because of some of these frustrations. His school sprang for a different early literacy curriculum this year.

Other educators say some of the materials for students have dense text and few engaging visuals. Much of the curriculum is translated into Spanish, but there are questions about how well-suited the lessons are for English language learners. And some teachers say it can be too challenging to make the lessons accessible for students reading below grade level, especially at the high school level.

Bronzeville Classical Principal Nicole Spicer believes that Skyline has made her teachers’ jobs easier and made lessons more engaging for students.

At Bronzeville Classical, teachers and Spicer, the principal, say they can relate to some of these concerns. But they also feel strongly the district has been listening and making helpful changes — and overall, Skyline has enriched their teaching and made their work easier.

Earlier this winter, sixth graders in Hernandez’s classroom learned about how rugged mountain geography influenced the early engineering of the ancient Inca people. She took the Skyline lesson on the topic and made it her own, creating engaging slides with stunning images of the Andes mountains.

Skyline, Hernandez says, has helped her cut down significantly on the time she used to spend on nights and weekends looking for lesson materials online.

Later, students explored design and engineering by the Spartans and ancient Greeks — culminating in a discussion of how these long-gone cultures influence design in present-day Chicago, such as its Soldier Field.

“They’re able to make that connection with the past and the present, which is really neat,” Hernandez said.

Javee Hernandez’s adoption of Skyline has saved her time on curriculum development over nights and weekends.

Beck, the teaching and learning head, says the digital curriculum was designed to be revised and improved quickly in response to teacher and student feedback. District leaders meet regularly with a steering committee of 120 teachers to get ongoing feedback. Beck said the district worked with SAFARI Montage to improve the platform and revamped some courses and units. It’s now focusing on upgrading materials meant for students.

Isabella Kelly, a member of a districtwide student advisory group, said fellow students had both positive feedback and suggestions for improving Skyline during a focus group on the science and French curriculums she hosted last spring.

Kelly, an Ogden High senior and student leader with the group Mikva Challenge, said students found the lessons engaging and loved the opportunities to collaborate on projects and work in small groups. But they also sometimes struggled navigating the online platform.

“The biggest challenge they faced was learning along with their teachers,” she said. “They wanted a little more assistance.”

Skyline is a key tool for academic recovery, district leaders say

In a recent webinar, district leaders reminded principals that rolling out a new curriculum is a heavy, time-consuming lift, and urged them not to get discouraged by the “growing pains,” as Chief Education Officer Bogdana Chkoumbova put it.

By keeping lessons and assignments squarely on grade levels, the curriculum can play a key part in COVID academic recovery, officials have said. It’s encouraging teachers to avoid constantly reteaching material from earlier grades — an approach shown to hamper academic catchup. That’s challenging work, Beck acknowledged, but the schools can layer other support, such as a specialized program for struggling readers called Wilson.

Beck said Chicago has worked with a group of curriculum experts to continually evaluate Skyline and better understand its impact on student outcomes, but that’s still a work in progress. The University of Chicago is studying whether the curriculum is paying off in early literacy improvements.

Steiner, at Johns Hopkins, says he is generally skeptical of the enormous energy and expense that go into creating an in-house curriculum in all subjects given the quality of off-the-shelf curriculums — especially if the district makes it voluntary. But he said rallying around a strong curriculum, particularly the collaborative work of teachers adopting it as grade level or subject matter teams, can be powerful for urban districts such as Chicago.

Some educators say that in a district where top leadership has been in flux for years and initiatives come and go, they are reluctant to buy into Skyline in a big way.

But Chkoumbova said the district knows adoption is a “long and hard process for schools,” and Skyline is here to stay.

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

Sarah Karp covers education for WBEZ. Follow her on Twitter @WBEZeducation and @sskedreporter.

‘Proof is in implementation:’ Chicago offers a first look at its $135 million curriculum overhaul

2021-06-17T18:09:24+00:00

In a glossy YouTube unveiling on Thursday, Chicago Public Schools offered a preview of its new, centralized $135 million curriculum called Skyline.

The district launched the curriculum project in 2019 and developed the curriculum bank with four publishers; a group of 300 district teachers customized it.

Chicago Public Schools introduced Skyline and some related materials Thursday, a day before LaTanya McDade, who oversaw the curriculum project, leaves her job as chief education officer. Her boss, schools chief Janice Jackson, steps down in two weeks. This week the district announced her temporary successor, interim CEO Jose Torres.

Jackson and McDade often have touted the value of a curriculum bank offering rich resources and culturally relevant materials to every school and teacher in the district.

In defending the $135 million cost, the pair said that teachers didn’t always have access to high-quality curriculum materials. While schools with more wealth could afford to purchase lessons and resources, higher-need schools had to scramble for curriculum or make do with outdated resources.

“When teachers are forced to find their own materials, the quality of those materials begins to vary widely,” McDade said Thursday.

Chicago Public Schools’ Chief Education Officer LaTanya McDade previews Skyline.

“Just like the skyline connects the city, Skyline was created to inspire and connect all of our schools with the high-quality, standards-aligned, culturally resourced curriculum that our schools need to succeed,” said Jackson in the YouTube video.

As of Thursday, the district had not made the Skyline curriculum bank accessible to the public.

The district said the digital curriculum bank, which is centralized and optional for schools to use, spans preschool to high school grades. It covers various subjects, including English, math, Spanish, and French.

It offers comprehensive lessons that teachers can customize. Each unit includes options for English language learners, mini-lessons for enrichment, and materials teachers can use to assess learning.

The district will make materials, all online, available via Google Docs that teachers can comment on, add suggestions for improvement, and adapt.

That customization, a panel of experts organized by the district said Thursday, makes Skyline stand out among curriculum projects undertaken by large public school districts.

Elaine Allensworth, director of the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research, said Thursday that she immediately noticed how the curriculum bank differed from curriculum developed by other cities that had middling to poor results.

“What I think is really unique about this is that teachers were involved in the development and it is grounded in Chicago,” said Allensworth. “It’s not a one-size-fits-all curriculum. Teachers can figure out what works for them and what works for their students.”

Panelist Scott Marion, executive director of the New Hampshire-based Center for Assessment, said that involving teachers in the customization and encouraging them to sustain and update it over time makes this effort unique.

“States are too frightened to get involved in curriculum work, yet we know that access to high-quality curriculum, or the lack of access to high-quality curriculum, is really one of the great contributors to inequalities we see manifest in our system,” said Marion.

District officials touted the curriculum bank’s lessons rooted in Chicago places and history that will resonate with children living here.

An example list of texts related to lessons includes several books based in Chicago and written by locals, such as Adam Gamble’s picture book “Good Night Chicago,” Kevin Coval’s anthology “The Breakbeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop,” and Eve L. Ewing’s “Electric Arches,” an exploration of Black girlhood and womanhood that is partially set in the city.

Other works touch on topics of equity and diversity: Trevor Noah’s “Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood” investigates the impact of apartheid, and Yangsook Choi’s “The Name Jar” explores themes of identity and assimilation.

“This is game-changing work,” McDade said in an interview with Chalkbeat Thursday. “As a district, this is a bold and audacious goal.”

Also Thursday, teachers and principals spoke about how the new curriculum can free up educators from the time-consuming and sometimes costly process of designing their own lessons — so they can focus instead on tailoring the instruction to specific student needs.

A centralized curriculum is also a powerful resource in a district where many students switch schools repeatedly, only to find themselves in unfamiliar territory with lessons in their new classrooms.

Juanita Martin, a teacher at New Sullivan Elementary on the city’s Far South Side, piloted draft Skyline lessons this school year with other educators. She said the phonics-based learning materials helped third graders who arrived in her classroom still unable to read get caught up.

She said she and her students appreciated the engaging games and activities that came with the curriculum: “It was all right there.”

Several students spoke about the importance of seeing themselves and their communities reflected in the curriculum.

Cassius Palacio, a senior at Brooks College Prep Academy, said learning about Afro-Latinos during Black History Month this year was revelatory: “I was so excited to see myself in the classroom for the first time.”

Officials said Thursday that the district will offer an extra hour of teacher training each week from the fall. McDade said the district plans ongoing professional development on the fully digital curriculum — a job made easier by the experience with technology all teachers got during the pandemic, including some training the district provided to educators earlier this school year.

“No matter how good your curriculum is, the instruction is going to be crucial,” said Gloria Ladson Billings, president of the National Academy of Education, and a professor emerita at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “The proof is in the implementation.”

Chicago schools CEO search: ‘A very difficult job — now more than ever’

2021-05-06T19:55:56+00:00

For Nicole Spicer at Chicago’s Bronzeville Classical, news that the district’s CEO, Janice Jackson, plans to step down stirred anxious questions: Could the city enlist a leader with the experience, education chops and mettle to replace her? What would it take to draw that kind of leader to the traditionally high-pressure job at an especially high-pressure moment?

Finding a successor will be “a huge undertaking,” said Spicer, whom Jackson handpicked as the founding principal for the selective South Side elementary in 2017. Spicer said her priority No. 1 for the next hire is someone steeped in education, like Jackson, who drew from her own experiences as a former Chicago student, teacher and principal.

Over the past decade, the tenure of Chicago schools chiefs has tended to be volatile and brief. Jackson was the exception, outlasting the five previous chiefs with her three-and-a-half years of service — but even she made it clear this week that the job’s demands amid perpetual conflict with the union and the drain of COVID-19 had weakened her resolve.

Education insiders privately warn that, if the homegrown CEO who dubbed leading the district her “dream job” is stepping down, it’s likely a narrow list of qualified individuals who could, or would, succeed her. The district sits at a challenging juncture: It hasn’t yet reopened school buildings full time for most students, animosity with the teachers union lingers, parents feel dissatisfied, thousands of students have disengaged entirely, and there’s political uncertainty about who will ultimately call the shots as the conversation over the elected school board gets fast tracked in Springfield.

But certain aspects of the job could make it attractive. The district has reported marked growth in graduation rates and relative budget stability in the past decade. It’s poised to receive billions in federal emergency funding, which give it the opportunity to innovate and tackle persistent challenges. And the moment offers a rare chance for an incoming CEO to appoint his or her own leadership team, as the district’s No. 2 and No. 3, LaTanya McDade and Arnie Rivera, also will step down.

“It’s certainly a challenging time to recruit a new leader,” said Beth Swanson, who served as deputy of education in Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration and is now CEO of the venture philanthropy fund A Better Chicago. “But it’s also a unique opportunity to think about the best possible ways to serve our students in this moment, given the shift to remote learning and hybrid learning and the use of technology. This is a moment where innovation and collaboration are critical.”

The district said Wednesday that it’s engaging Illinois-based BWP & Associates to conduct a national search, but it has not finalized a contract with the company yet. The district put out a bid for an executive search firm last month to replace McDade but modified its scope to focus on finding a CEO.

John Easton of the Chicago Consortium on School Research said Jackson brought a tough-to-replicate combination of strengths to the job: deep understanding of the district, instructional expertise, the personal investment that comes with being a district parent, and a close bond with McDade.

“I mourn their departure,” he said. “I was looking forward to the stability because we need it so much, and I scratch my head about how we will replace them.”

The district’s new leader will have the jump on the task of overseeing an expanded summer school program and reopening school buildings for full-time in-person instruction in the fall. But perhaps even more challenging are some of Chicago Public Schools’ intractable pre-pandemic issues: deep mistrust of the district in some of the city’s Black neighborhoods and declining enrollment, with a growing number of half-empty schools that offer increasingly pared-down programming.

And the timing of the new leader’s likely arrival means she or he will need to get up to speed and tackle a pressing to-do list on an incredibly compressed timeline — and with a mayoral election on the horizon that could affect that leader’s fate in a mayoral controlled district. That makes Easton think that a district insider might be in a stronger position to pull off that challenging transition.

“I’d love to see an insider step in,” Easton said, though he said he does not have an administrator in mind.

Outside CEO hires to Chicago Public Schools have, in recent history, struggled to gain much traction and departed quickly. Arne Duncan, the former Chicago Public Schools CEO and U.S. education secretary, said what makes Jackson’s departure such a blow to the district is that she appeared poised to stick around. The district must look for a replacement who does not view the job as a resume-builder or a stepping stone to another position.

“Stability is important, and continuity is important,” he said. “I promise you I was better in my seventh year than I was in my first year.”

He pointed to recent turnover at the top of other large urban districts, which indicates that this period of time was difficult for many superintendents.

“This past year was hopefully a once in a hundred years level of challenge,” he said. “There was no playbook for it. Nobody won. The pandemic won.”

As for job requirements, Duncan said a “certain chemistry” with the mayor and school board is a job requirement. The district must frame the job opening as an opportunity to rebuild a better urban school system — a great fit for somebody who does not feel beholden to traditional ways of doing school.

With the elected school board conversation now on a fast track in the state’s legislature in Springfield, the power structure that gives the mayor and schools chief authority is now in flux. It’s hard to say just how much autonomy a new hire might have — though the current structure of reporting to City Hall also meant Jackson could get overruled by the mayor.

The Chicago Teachers Union so far this week refrained from directly criticizing the schools chief, as its leaders formally called for a CEO search process that actively involved families and school communities. Union President Jesse Sharkey acknowledged the enormity of the job, but said that Jackson and her team had improved the district’s reputation and done some foundational work, including investing more in schools and improving facilities, that would benefit the next CEO. “There are a bunch of ways we have to improve, don’t get me wrong,” he said, “but it’s not the impossible job. This is a school system that has got a lot impressive features that are exciting to preserve, save, and improve.”

That doesn’t mean it’s easy to build consensus. “This is not just a job for someone who sees themself as a super administrator,” Sharkey said. “It has to be a job for someone who wants to lead and has some tolerance for hearing from a lot of different voices — and can embrace that.”

The politics required of the role might not be a deterrent for some candidates, since large urban districts in the order of Chicago are a perennial draw for ambitious, talented leaders, even under challenging circumstances, said Dan Domenech of the American Association of School Administrators. But only a small pool of candidates will have the deep experience, instructional knowhow and political savvy needed for Chicago Public Schools’ top job.

“There’ll be no shortage of applicants,” he said. “But only a handful of people are qualified to tackle what’s a very difficult job — now more than ever.”

Domenech said that while the concurrent departures of Jackson’s second- and third-in-command raise the hiring stakes for the district, some superintendents would be drawn to the opportunity to build their own leadership team.

Addressing the fallout from the pandemic will be a heavy lift. But with billions of federal funds on the way, this moment of disruption also opens up room for innovation and decisive action to tackle long-standing problems and inequities, with the means to do it.

The moment calls for someone who doesn’t shy from conflict and who’s willing to roll up sleeves and work closely with community leaders, school councils, and principals, said Heather Anichini, the president of the Chicago Public Education Fund.

“Chicago is the best city to lead public education,” she said. “People care so much about public schools, who’s leading them, about how that person acts and what that person says. It also means people don’t always agree and there is often tension and controversy and difficulty.”

At Bronzeville Classical, Spicer said she began fielding calls from parents moments after Jackson’s announcement went public. She said they’re worried about how the leadership departures will affect their school, which Jackson said Monday was one of her proudest achievements.

She’s telling them that her school will carry on.

“I do have faith in the district to carry on with the business of educating children in Chicago,” she said. “If I’m honest, I am concerned there will be a lot of change but I know Dr. Jackson is committed to see the transition through. She will make sure whoever is selected is set up for success. That gives me some consolation.”

Chicago says it will reform school budgeting. Can efforts survive a pandemic?

2020-06-19T11:00:00+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.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot took office pledging to reexamine the way Chicago pays for schools. She held a series of public meetings, convened a working group of experts, and invited the public to weigh in on the much-reviled and impossibly complicated school budget system.

Then the coronavirus pandemic hit, state and city revenues dried up, and students were scattered to the winds to learn in their homes, an event that deepened existing learning gaps among students.

Advocates insist that budget reform efforts could still lead to important changes, and that the need for equitable funding is all the more urgent. But, in a moment of historical financial uncertainty, how that will be done — and what cuts it could mean in other places — only underscores how difficult it is to revisit school funding in a city that has faced chronic school budget deficits.

“Taking money from an underfunded school to give money to another underfunded school — that is not equity,” Ralph Martire, executive director of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability and an architect of the state’s education formula, said.

Students and families have long said there are have and have-not campuses. The reasons for the disparities are complicated: Many schools say they don’t have enough money to pay for the necessary staff positions to help high-need students, while some schools have parent groups who can raise large sums to supplement existing staff and supplies.

At the school level, the budget picture gets even more complex. The district spends the most per pupil to maintain its most severely under-enrolled schools, such as Tilden High School on the city’s South Side and Manley Career Academy High School on the Far West Side. Some, such as the city’s teachers union, have argued that those schools have the greatest needs — and should get more. While others have wondered if the city should reckon with its shrinking enrollment by redistributing money across fewer campuses, which could mean merging or closing schools, a controversial option in Chicago.

These are the kinds of tough questions facing budget reform efforts, and members of the working group said their efforts are just getting started.

For the last six years, the basis of Chicago’s funding formula has been to give the same per-pupil amount to individual schools, with small variations to address students’ needs and backgrounds. Last year the district made a few changes, protecting schools from a one-year drop in enrollment, targeting resources to high-need schools through “equity grants,” and creating a “poverty metric” to focus investment in schools with large numbers of low-income students.

Some schools, like Roosevelt High School in Albany Park, credited the boosts with helping spur its first enrollment increase in a decade. Others, passed over for the investments despite taking part in the competitive application process for new programs, said the process was unfair.

The changes highlighted a question that has dogged Chicago budget reform for years: In a school district where money is often tight, does more money for one school equal less for another?

On the campaign trail in 2019, then-mayoral candidate Lori Lightfoot promised to revisit school funding, and to do so in a way that engaged a broad array of community voices.

Once in office, Lightfoot moved quickly to form the budget committee, bringing in some heavy-hitter school policy experts. The 19-member committee spent the first months of this year learning about how Chicago’s schools are funded, hearing community input at six public meetings held in January and February, and then drawing up a series of recommendations. Members held their last meeting in February, just weeks before the coronavirus pandemic closed schools. About 500 people participated in the public meetings.

The group, which released its recommendations in April, proposed determining an “ideal” level of funding for individual schools and encouraging district officials to lobby for more state and local funding.

The approach was broadly modeled on the so-called “evidence-based” formula used by the state to fund school districts. State leaders adopted the method in 2017, with the goal of determining the amount of money it would take to provide a quality education for students, including those with greater needs, such as English Language learners and special education students.

The plan also had a key political component: It was a tacit acknowledgement that the state wasn’t giving enough money to school districts to meet student needs. With the new approach, school districts learned how much state funding they will get each year, with the highest-need districts, such as Chicago, set to receive boosts in future years.

Marguerite Roza, a school finance expert and the director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University, said the changes created a more equitable system because the new formula took into account how much school districts were getting in local property taxes and then tried to cover the gap between that amount and what they actually need.

“What changes was the relationship between state and local money,” Roza, who noted that the trend for many districts nationwide was to move toward student-based budgeting, said.

But advocates say the conversation about how much money Chicago schools receive —and where the district and city could find more — is as much a political calculation as it is about the nitty-gritty of recalculating the funding formula.

Martire, a member of the budget committee, echoed a call raised by parents in some of the public meetings: a new funding formula can only be fully effective if there’s more money to spend.

For years, district officials have blamed the state for not giving Chicago Public Schools enough money. The district also has continued to pay for the upkeep of schools closed during the mass closures in 2013, including outside cleaning services for now empty buildings. The Chicago Teachers Union used its strike in the fall, in part, to push the city to dip into non-school funds for the education budget. The district recently signed a new teachers union contract that promised $1.5 billion in new spending over the next five years.

Now, the coronavirus pandemic has thrown school districts across the country into an uncertain budgetary future, with many warning the federal government that they’re facing dire cuts. With uncertainty over what school will look like in the fall, the costs of running a socially distanced school system are still up in the air.

The district’s total operating budget for this year was $6.18 billion. More than half of the money comes from local revenue, with the remaining 32% coming from state money and 11% from federal dollars.

The city budget has a $700 million hole caused by dropping tax revenues after the coronavirus shut downs. The state has managed to hold school funding steady this year. And while the federal government has given districts some relief funding, education associations say they need still more to head off dire layoffs and cuts.

Martire says Chicago Public Schools should be able to get a steady stream of funding from city property tax revenues - even if some mortgage holders default, banks will still shore up those taxes, he said. He also hopes a referendum on a progressive tax revenue system in Illinois will pass this fall, which could bring in billions in new revenue.

That will solve some of the concerns about trying to do more with the same amount of money or even less, says Martire.

Some members of the committee, chief among them the Chicago Teachers Union, say they want the district to look for other sources of revenue.

The bigger question might be how much of an appetite the district will have to revamp its funding formula amidst an uncertain budget year. At a board meeting earlier this year, schools chief Janice Jackson said it’s unlikely the district will move away from a student-based budgeting formula for the fall.

District officials said they already use an approach that helps the poorest schools. This year, they will provide $100,000 in equity grants at more than 100 of the city’s highest-need schools, which were pinpointed using the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Economic Hardship Index. The index uses factors like housing density and poverty level to decide which city areas most need support. The district also tweaked the special education formula to give more money to schools with larger numbers of students with special needs.

Pavlyn Jankov, a researcher with the Chicago Teachers Union, said the union wants a promise from the district not to cut school budgets because of enrollment numbers. “We want student-based budgeting to be tossed out,” said Jankov. “We think, in light of the pandemic, it’s crazy to expect schools to cut staff.”

The budget review process will cover multiple budget cycles, according to the district, and the working group will be reconvened later this year.

Martire applauded the district’s efforts so far. The group “has really done a nice job of having very frank conversations about the different challenges” of reforming the budget formula.

Andrew Askuvich, whose two children attend Jamieson Elementary School in North Park, said at one of the public meetings earlier this year that he knows there are schools with greater needs. Jamieson’s parent group raises money each year to provide each teacher with $300 for school supplies. If the district gets more money, he said it should go first to schools with the highest needs.

“In the end, there’s the understanding that there is just not enough right now,” he said. “For a lot of people [here] it was really about equity, about making sure the schools that have been neglected for decades, that more is done for these schools.”

Expect masks, temperature checks: Chicago schools chief offers new details about fall

2020-06-13T00:16:16+00:00

Students and teachers will be required to wear masks, and schools must conduct temperature checks daily if Chicago students return to campuses in the fall.

In a letter to educators and parents Friday evening, Chicago schools chief Janice Jackson offered a first glimpse at what school could look like in fall and said the district was preparing for the possibility of reopening classrooms. But it’s still unknown whether students will attend school every day or in shifts, or how much remote learning will continue to be a reality.

She said the district was still working out multiple scenarios for returning to in-person schooling.

One thing sounded certain: While some districts have considered going back to school earlier in case the coronavirus surges in late fall, Chicago remains “committed” to its start date of Sept. 8, the day after Labor Day, she wrote.

“However, what that looks like and how many students will be able to return at a time is also dependent on the phasing of Illinois’ reopening,” Jackson wrote.

Chicago will continue with its plan to offer summer school virtually, she said, despite the state school board’s decision to reverse its position and allow districts to let small groups gather in classrooms this summer.

“While we are developing plans for a potential return to in-person instruction in the fall,” she wrote, “it would be premature for us to bring students and staff back at this time due to the ongoing challenges associated with in-person instruction.”

According to Chalkbeat sources, Illinois’ state school board is expected to release guidance in the next week or so.

Jackson said the district plans to survey parents, students, and educators about reopening. She said more details are forthcoming.

Illinois just reopened its early learning centers with lower class sizes and building capacity limits. The state has recommended that children ages 3 and over wear masks in and out of buildings and on playgrounds. Many providers have said that requiring young children to wear masks is proving difficult.

“Everyone will need to wear face coverings,” Jackson wrote. The district will provide “a limited set” to students and staff members at the start of the school year.

Chicago district leaders suspend food distribution, say protests will spur ‘difficult conversations’ in virtual classrooms Monday

2020-06-01T05:39:29+00:00

Chicago Public Schools will suspend citywide food distribution Monday following a weekend of protest and unrest that led Mayor Lori Lightfoot to lock down the Loop business district and suspend public transit.

With confrontations between protesters and police occurring in neighborhoods into Sunday night, district officials said in a late email to families that meal sites, school buildings, and administrative offices would be closed on Monday, but remote learning would continue.

“This decision was made out of an abundance of caution and in recognition of the potential challenges families and staff could face trying to reach school buildings,” the district said in an email sent at 10:42 p.m. Sunday.

The email came only hours after the district said it would continue to provide meals at school sites. In some neighborhoods, convenience stores and supermarkets were closed on Sunday afternoon, and it was not clear when they could be expected to reopen.

Chicago has steered one of the largest meal distribution programs of any large urban district, handing out millions of free meals across hundreds of campuses since measures to contain the coronavirus shut down school buildings March 17. The district said it would reevaluate the suspension after Monday.

It’s not clear how the protests will affect the mayor’s previous plans to start reopening Chicago restaurants, businesses, and child care centers that closed in March due to the coronavirus pandemic. The city is supposed to move into the next phase of reopening on Wednesday.

Lightfoot imposed a 9 p.m. curfew on Saturday amid protests against the police killing, in Minneapolis, of George Floyd. On Sunday evening, in response to widespread property destruction, Chicago suspended bus and train service until Monday morning and blocked off a portion of the city near downtown.

Earlier Sunday, schools chief Janice Jackson sent a note to families promising that educators would take on “difficult conversations” about modern-day racism in America.

“Racism is all around us, but for too long, our nation has locked it away in the Civil Rights chapter of our history books,” she wrote. “We taught and talked in terms of segregation, bus seating, and Bull Connor, while not giving enough attention and voice to what’s happening today. I’m challenging our community — parents, teachers, students — to call racist behavior out when we see it. We’ve tolerated intolerance for far too long, and the time has come for us to act.”

Jackson, a mother of two, also shared her own worry as a parent of a black son.

“Far too many of us have come to accept fear and pain as part of normal life,” she wrote. “I worry that when he leaves our home to ride bikes with his friends, he will come back to me as a headline, a hashtag, a rallying cry — an Ahmaud, a Breonna, a George” — references to Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and Floyd, three black Americans who were killed in recent months.

The district said it would make resources available to educators Monday morning.

Teachers took to Facebook groups over the weekend to encourage each other to facilitate classroom conversations, acknowledging the difficulty of doing so virtually.

“These are all students who have some context for police brutality,” said Alexander Rolnick, a civics teacher at Back of the Yards College Prep. He cited a sophomore year curriculum about the Chicago movement that won reparations for police torture. His students also followed the case of Laquan McDonald, a Chicago teenager who was killed by police in 2014, as well as the subsequent murder trial of Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke, he said.

Rolnick, who conducted his last live class with seniors last week, said he reached back out to his students and invited them to join him to talk on Monday. He said he would let them lead the conversation.

Even before federal COVID-19 rescue checks arrive, Illinois schools spend tens of millions on technology

2020-05-06T20:05:06+00:00

This story was produced with the Better Government Association, a Chicago nonprofit newsroom focused on government accountability.

Illinois school leaders spent tens of millions of dollars within weeks as they scrambled to respond to the coronavirus outbreak and the abrupt school closures it triggered.

In a bid to roll out remote learning plans quickly, officials made rapid-fire buys even before the federal government promised $678 million in emergency aid for Illinois schools. In some of the largest school districts across the state, the bulk of the spending went toward thousands of laptops and tablets.

But the robust purchases still fall short of supplying all students with the computers and reliable internet they need to learn at home, underscoring the depth of the digital divide facing low-income families. Officials are only just beginning to track whether all this new equipment is paying off in more students logging in and learning, with fewer than two-thirds of high schoolers participating in remote learning in Peoria. Chicago Public Schools, the state’s largest district, still hasn’t provided a districtwide tally for how many students engage in school work at all.

Other critical questions loom: How far will the federal emergency funds stretch to cover district costs? How aggressively should districts spend to rein in the pandemic’s damage to their most vulnerable students and to prepare for the unpredictable months ahead?

Parents and others are calling on districts to be more transparent about their spending decisions and enlist public input.

“No one has a playbook on how to navigate this,” said Jianan Shi of the parent group Raise Your Hand for Illinois Public Education, part of a coalition pressing Chicago district officials to include families in spending decisions. “We expect the district to be in partnership with its families for the solutions.”

Chalkbeat and the Better Government Association surveyed five of Illinois’ largest school districts about their expenditures tied to the crisis: Chicago, Rockford School District 205, Springfield School District 186, Elgin School District U-46, and Peoria School District 150. Springfield did not provide a list of expenses.

Chicago said this week it could provide estimated expenditures only through April 10. Asked to provide public records of technology purchases and contracts, the district referred Chalkbeat to a school board document authorizing expenditures up to $75 million during the crisis without board approval.

Illinois district administrators said they don’t know when they’ll receive federal dollars earmarked for their schools, what specific expenditures will be covered, or how much of the money they will have to pass on to charter and private schools.

The federal aid the five districts expect to receive amounts to less than 4% of their combined annual budgets.

“The federal money at this juncture won’t be enough, particularly in communities that are low income,” said Ralph Martire of the Chicago-based Center for Budget and Tax Accountability.

TECHNOLOGY PURCHASES

When the coronavirus outbreak closed the state’s schools in March, the districts Chalkbeat and the BGA surveyed were in very different spots in terms of their technology inventories.

Chicago lagged other districts. A year before the pandemic, schools chief Janice Jackson set a goal to equip each of its more than 300,000 students in district-run schools with a computer by 2024. When COVID-19 hit, about 115,000 students still needed a device, by a district estimate.

Since March, the district has bought 53,000 Chromebooks, iPads and laptops — an initial purchase worth $13.8 million followed by a more recent buy — to add to 65,000 devices it had in stock. In about two months since schools closed, it has handed out roughly 100,000 of those devices.

Elgin U-46, which has an enrollment of 39,000, was in the midst of rolling out a plan to equip each student with a laptop and had just purchased 1,100 iPads for preschoolers before the pandemic hit. The district spent another $1 million beefing up its inventory of Chromebooks when the governor announced school closures.

“Right out the gate, we placed an order for as many Chromebooks as we could get our hands on because we did not have a device for every family,” Elgin Superintendent Tony Sanders said.

In Rockford, School District 205 had enough Chromebooks for everyone who needed one from third through 12th grade. But administrators had a logistical problem: Some schools had a surplus of computers while others didn’t have enough. In the end, the district deployed 15,000 Chromebooks from its stockpile and bought an additional 16,000 devices. With the new purchases, the district has roughly one device for each of its nearly 29,000 students.

Superintendent Ehren Jarrett said the district is taking a risk because he doesn’t know if the emergency federal funds will cover the device purchases, but he felt spending the money quickly was necessary.

“We are hopeful that these dollars will flow through –– we certainly need them –– but we didn’t want to wait or hesitate to meet the needs of our students,” Jarrett said.

INTERNET ACCESS

Devices are just a start. For districts, ensuring students have reliable access to the internet has proved a more daunting task. Elgin officials briefly considered equipping school buses with Wi-Fi and parking them in high-need neighborhoods, but quickly realized the signal wouldn’t be strong enough.

Other districts studied taking advantage of the publicly accessible Wi-Fi locations that dot their cities. But they stopped short of encouraging families to leave their homes while a stay-at-home order was in effect. Some districts purchased hot-spot devices for some students, but those are expensive and now largely out of stock amid high demand.

A parent picks up a loaner Chromebook outside Richardson Middle School on the Southwest Side of Chicago in April.

In the end, many districts leaned heavily on steering families to low-cost internet programs from Comcast and other providers. That approach has drawn concerns because the fine print on the deal can prevent some families from signing up.

Recently, some districts have tried to remove those barriers, as elected officials and civic groups press internet providers to expand their services to establish Wi-Fi “super spots” in high-need communities.

Elgin agreed to pick up the monthly Comcast bill for about 100 low-income families. Last week, Rockford’s school board made a similar decision, agreeing to spend up to $39,800 to connect students to a Comcast plan costing each about $10 per month after two free months. Rockford estimates about 1,000 of its nearly 29,000 students don’t have reliable internet service.

“The Comcast (plan) is really our stopgap until we get to the next digital learning, remote learning plan going forward,” said Jason Barthel, Rockford’s executive director of technology, at an April board meeting.

In Peoria, where roughly 70% of the school district’s 13,000 students are low income, the district formed a “connectivity committee” that called Comcast on behalf of families who could not sign up for the company’s low-cost plan because of issues outside their control. For example, some families lived in apartments where previous tenants hadn’t paid their bills. The district also spent $108,000 on 200 hot-spot devices with unlimited data plans for a year.

Chicago spent $2.6 million on 12,000 hot-spot devices for students who lack secure housing. But with an estimated one out of five Chicago children under 18 living in a home without broadband, officials have said securing internet access for all students who need it is too costly and have pointed families to Comcast’s plan.

The Chicago Teachers Union calls that response a “cop-out,” saying the district must look for “creative solutions” to get more students connected. It has also criticized the district’s device rollout as uneven.

“The claim is that black children matter,” said Stacy Davis Gates, the union’s vice president. “Brown children matter. Homeless children matter. But the reality is that many of these children still don’t have devices and broadband access.”

PARTICIPATION RATES

As remote learning has become the reality for the rest of the spring and possibly into the fall, districts are stepping up efforts to track how many students are participating and to encourage more to log on.

But participation data so far has lagged. One reason is that the state left it up to individual districts to define and track student engagement. Getting a full picture of how many students are attending remote classes, turning in assignments, or connecting with teachers in some way, and then comparing that data district to district may prove difficult.

Chicago officials have said they are starting to track attendance by campus, but unlike some other large urban districts they have not yet released any numbers.

Rockford officials said they started tracking in April the number of students who completed assignments or asked for feedback, but the district said it will not have full data until the end of this week.

Other districts said they believe their investments in technology, plus phone calls, mailers, and other types of dedicated outreach, are improving student engagement.

In Peoria, district officials said high school participation rates rose to 60% in mid-April, from 54% at the beginning of the month. In all grades, participation rates averaged roughly 70%.

“We feel that we have done a good job at reaching our kids while obviously demonstrating room for improvement,” said Thomas Bruch, Peoria Public Schools spokesman.

In Elgin, the district said overall attendance improved from 80% in late March to 85% in late April, though students who qualify for subsidized lunch — a measure of poverty — lag markedly behind their peers.

While technology represents the bulk of emergency spending — about 80% for Chicago, Peoria and Rockford combined — districts are also paying for other urgent needs. Among them are pay and protective equipment for workers who hand out meals and devices to families outside of schools.

Chicago is paying its front-line staff, such as janitors and nutrition workers, a 50% premium to work while schools are closed. By mid-April, that cost had added up to about $2.5 million.

LOOKING AHEAD

Some critics say with federal help on the way, districts must spend more aggressively to keep vulnerable students from falling behind — and that spending plans should go beyond technology. Others urge leaders to take a more conservative approach, worrying the federal dollars will cover limited expenses and won’t avert budget shortfalls amid declining state revenue.

The feds haven’t spelled out which expenses they will cover, and Martire of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability points to numerous gray areas, such as the premium pay for staff, that may or may not be reimbursed.

The full impact of the pandemic on the Illinois economy and state coffers is still hard to predict. This week, a Chicago coalition of parents and advocacy groups urged state leaders not to cut school funding and fill the gap with the federal dollars. The groups also called for steering federal emergency dollars toward the state’s most vulnerable students, including those from low-income families and those with disabilities.

With Gov. J.B. Pritzker forecasting the state could fall $6.2 billion short from now through June 2021 compared with his pre-COVID spending plans, some districts are already bracing for tough budgetary times and belt-tightening. Elgin froze hiring for positions not deemed critical. In Rockford, the district is projecting revenue shortfalls from $10 million to $19 million next school year.

“We are prepared to use a combination of any of these federal dollars as well as the reserves to avoid having to cut back significantly on staff and buy some time,” said Jarrett, Rockford’s superintendent.

In Chicago, leaders sounded more optimistic and said they planned to spend nearly 5% more on schools next year. They did not explain how the federal dollars will figure in next year’s budget, but Jackson said at an April board meeting that the district will present a spending plan in coming weeks. As of mid-April, the district had spent the equivalent of 10% of its anticipated federal funds.

The Chicago Teachers Union said the district is missing an opportunity to attack longstanding inequities. Union leaders think the district needs to invest more in services for students with special needs and for English learners, and hire more social workers and nurses to address trauma in the fall.

School board members, who in March granted district leaders permission to spend as much as $75 million without prior authorization, urged the district to keep anticipated budget pressures in mind.

“Those unknowns will impact our budget,” board member Lucino Sotelo said. “We have to make sure we are responsible stewards.”

Still, some advocates say that the pandemic could provide an opening to rethink how schools reach disadvantaged students and how Illinois invests in their education.

“While there are many challenges presented by the COVID-19 crisis,” the Chicago coalition of civic groups wrote to the state, “this is also an opportunity to support innovations in education to support our most vulnerable students.”

Samantha Smylie contributed reporting.

Drumroll, please: Chicago announces a virtual graduation ceremony, and it will star Oprah

2020-04-30T20:04:18+00:00

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot will host a virtual graduation ceremony for high school seniors in mid-June featuring Oprah Winfrey as the commencement speaker.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced the news in a TikTok video while wearing a cap and gown and dancing in “Madame Mayor” sneakers.

“The times we are living in are historic and stunning, forcing us all to take a deep look at who we are as a people and our place in the world,” she said in a release. “No one knows this better than Oprah.”

A City Hall news release said the date and details would be forthcoming, but that the first ever citywide celebration of graduating high school seniors would feature student performances. Chicago Public Schools seniors and students from area Catholic and private schools will be invited to attend remotely.

Media executive and former talk show host Winfrey is one of the city’s most famous and widely admired former residents.

With more than two dozen states announcing that students will not return to in-person schooling this spring due to the coronavirus pandemic, education leaders have weighed what to do about graduation. Some have postponed ceremonies in hopes of hosting them later in person, while others have announced plans for drive-by graduations and virtual graduation ceremonies.

“The meaning of graduation is more profound than a physical stage and nothing can detract from the beaming pride of a Chicago Public Schools parent when their student earns a diploma,” Chicago schools chief Janice Jackson said in the news release. “We know we can’t fully replace the special milestones lost during this unprecedented crisis, but our seniors deserve to be celebrated for their hard work and we look forward to coming together to honor our seniors during this special occasion.”

City Hall said Thursday that a committee of educators from area high schools would sort out graduation details.

Chicago serves as a special backdrop for Winfrey’s career. The Baltimore native was relatively unknown when she began a half-hour talk show called “A.M. Chicago” here in 1984. Two years later, she debuted “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” becoming the first black woman in America to host nationally syndicated talk show.

I've always said that if I were to get on @tiktok_us it had to be for something REALLY special. Today is the day. Get ready. https://t.co/YVCt5h1dLx pic.twitter.com/2h9DtvdMRE
— Mayor Lightfoot #StayHomeSaveLives (@chicagosmayor) April 30, 2020

Despite coronavirus uncertainty, Chicago school leaders move forward with $125 million budget boost

2020-04-28T19:38:45+00:00

Chicago will spend $125 million next school year to boost special education and low-enrollment schools and to add some of the nurses and social workers it agreed to in the latest union contract, officials said Tuesday.

The district, which offered a first draft of school-level budgets for the 2020-21 year on Tuesday, expects to present a balanced full-district budget this summer, thanks in part to about $205 million in federal emergency funding to help it face strain from the coronavirus pandemic and resulting school building closures. Chicago Public Schools must share some of that funding with private and charter schools, according to the federal government.

The spending plan presented Tuesday for individual campuses represents about 60% of the anticipated total district budget.

Still, schools chief Janice Jackson stressed the district cannot rule out the need to adjust its plan, as the longer-term effects of the coronavirus outbreak on state and district budgets become clearer.

“We are also cognizant of the reality we live in with COVID-19,” she said. “We will continue to monitor that.”

Asked Tuesday afternoon whether budget increases are prudent as revenue projections trend downward, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said he didn’t know yet how coronavirus-related revenue shortfalls would impact schools. He said he was working with legislators to see “whether we will be able to increase education funding at all. But I hope that we will.”

The preliminary school spending plan comes amid questions about whether Pritzker will allow school campuses to reopen in fall or whether remote learning will continue. The governor over the weekend acknowledged that extended fall closures were a possibility.

On Tuesday, Chicago Public Schools leaders said they compiled this year’s budget in response to a community engagement process, initiated by Mayor Lori Lightfoot, to reconsider how Chicago divides up its $6.2 billion operating budget, about $3.8 billion of which was earmarked for individual schools in 2019-20.

More than a third of the slated $125 million increase — $44 million — will go to 255 schools in the form of so-called “equity grants,” which have previously been directed to campuses with shrinking enrollment. The money is intended to help those schools maintain or even bulk up programs with the aim of attracting more families.

That approach has raised questions about whether Chicago should continue to throw lifelines to its most struggling schools, since that comes at a cost to other schools. According to district enrollment data, 145 campuses this school year were less than half full.

Officials said Tuesday that they were broadening the definition of the grants to include schools in communities with a high “hardship index,” a metric that factors in poverty, employment, education levels, and other data. Schools can use the additional money to hire reading specialists, for instance.

New proposed funding includes $97 million to increase special education services, $18 million to expand free full-day pre-kindergarten, $13 million to hire more nurses and social workers, and $5 million to fund college and career programs at neighborhood schools.

“The school budgets we are releasing today are key to providing every student in the district with a high-quality education,” Jackson said.

District leaders touted the special education boost as the largest single-year funding increase for special education in the district’s history. Chief Education Officer LaTanya McDade said the district tweaked its approach to budgeting for special education to give schools more flexibility and reduce the need for “mid-year corrections.” That includes giving schools more opportunities to “round up” staff positions — for instance, budgeting for two teachers or aides when school numbers call for 1.2 full-time positions.

Officials with the Chicago Teachers Union voiced disappointment Tuesday that the district had not briefed them on the school budgets ahead of time. In a statement, union President Jesse Sharkey criticized the lack of detail about how the district will address the COVID-19 crisis in school budgets. He said an increase in funding for nurses and social workers falls short of a goal to place those professionals in each school, as the union has advocated.

Before the coronavirus pandemic hit, Chicago was in the first stages of rethinking how it allocates its school budgets, part of a campaign promise by Lightfoot to revamp how the district doles out funds.

A committee of board members, district leaders, and union organizers held public meetings to solicit budget input earlier this year.

Their recommendations, also released Tuesday, suggest that in the long term the district must significantly change how it divvies up funds. In the short term, the district said it owes schools more transparency on how budget decisions are made, and will sharpen its definition of equity.

Jackson said the district incorporated two of the group’s six recommendations this spring. One was using school neighborhood’s “hardship indexes” instead of just student demographics to drive added funding to schools. The district also tried to give principals more of a say in crafting their school budgets.

Jackson said the district is still considering the remaining recommendations. She said the committee and residents who took part in listening sessions rallied around a need to advocate more aggressively for additional revenue from the state. She added she has no intention to move away from budgeting based on student enrollment, noting that slightly more than 50% of schools’ budgets are based purely on enrollment.

She added, “If the pie is not big enough for everybody, we will continue to have those debates.”

Principals are expected to receive their budgets on Tuesday afternoon.

Two principals joined Jackson in a virtual press conference to praise their latest budget allocations. Zaneta Abdul-Ahad at Hampton Fine and Performing Arts Elementary in Ashburn said she was thrilled to see additional funding for two new full-day pre-kindergarten classrooms — long on the wish list of the school community.

Victor Iturralde at Solorio Academy High School said students and families in the school’s Gage Park neighborhood face “tremendous economic challenges,” and he welcomes a new $100,000 “equity grant” the school received to provide added stability.

“Our students and community need a little help leveling the playing field,” he said.

Samantha Smylie contributed reporting.

Tens of thousands more devices coming to Chicago schools but internet remains a challenge

2020-04-22T23:02:05+00:00

Chicago Public Schools is ramping up its push to hand out devices to students, with a second wave of schools slated to get computer shipments in coming weeks.

The district had initially ordered 37,000 new devices, but after hearing from schools about higher needs bought 16,000 devices more recently. The purchases of Chromebooks, iPads and laptops are part of roughly $32 million the district has spent so far to respond to the coronavirus crisis that shuttered schools throughout Illinois and shifted much learning online.

The district is roughly halfway through handing out the new computers plus about 65,000 devices schools already had on hand — a total of 115,000 digital devices in all. It has so far prioritized an initial group of schools in some of the city’s highest-poverty neighborhoods, but other schools will see reinforcements as well.

But amid educator concerns that they are still not reaching many of their students, the district’s governing board pressed administrators Wednesday to expand access to the internet. During their virtual monthly meeting, board members suggested Comcast and other major providers could do more to help needy students — and questioned whether district and city officials could do more to pressure them.

“This requires much more cooperation from Comcast,” said board President Miguel del Valle. “In unprecedented times you need to do things differently.”

At the board’s previous meeting in March, members unanimously voted to allow the district to spend up to $75 million for its coronavirus response without prior board approval. District leaders said they needed the flexibility of this blank check to act swiftly and decisively during an uncertain time. They said the money would go toward technology, meal distribution, overtime pay for front-line school workers, and other expenses.

This week, the district reported about $5 million in expenses so far under that authorization: about $2.3 million on 11,600 hotspots to provide internet access for students in temporary living situations, $2.6 million on premium pay for front-line staff such as janitors and $18,900 for face masks.

School board members had been separately briefed on millions of additional spending under existing contracts and previous authorizations, including the device purchases — but the district has not yet made these expenses, which fall outside the $75 million most recently authorized by the board, publicly available.

In response to questions from Chalkbeat, the district said it spent $6.5 million on Chromebooks, $4.8 million on laptops and $2.5 million on iPads.

District spokesman James Gherardi said that later this month, the district will start posting monthly updates on its website that outline all spending “done to support students during the COVID-19 crisis.”

Chicago, the state’s largest district with 355,100 students, is slated to receive $205.7 million in emergency federal funds to support districts’ coronavirus response efforts, according to preliminary figures. Some of the money will go to private and charter schools. The state has encouraged districts to spend that money on strengthening their infrastructure to deliver learning remotely.

Chicago officials said they are working on a plan for spending the federal dollars, which they will also make public down the road.

“There are a lot of unknowns,” said school chief Janice Jackson, noting uncertainty about the coronavirus outbreak’s impact on the economy and the state’s budget. “$200 million sounds like a lot of money, but it’s not a lot.”

CPS Chief Information Officer Phillip DiBartolo noted the district has estimated 115,000 students need a digital device. Adding to the tablets and laptops schools already have, the new purchases get the district to that number — though he cautioned that some devices will likely need to get replaced as they are damaged or lost. He added the district — the third largest in the country – has been able to use its “buying power” to expedite the purchases despite significant backlogs.

“My sense is that next week will be a very heavy distribution week,” he said.

DiBartolo said the district estimates 115,000 students also lack internet access. But because the district didn’t have a stockpile of mobile hotspots before the outbreak, that’s a tough gap to bridge. To complicate matters, hotspot devices are in extremely short supply because of high demand and COVID-19 disruption to production in Asia.

District schools largely continue to steer families to a Comcast internet program for low-income residents, which comes with two free months, and other low-cost offers. Some community nonprofits have criticized what they see as the Comcast deal’s problems.

DiBartolo said district and city leaders have reached out to internet service providers to ask for more help.

But some school board members said some families have balked at signing on to these offers for various reasons, including concern about credit checks and charges eventually kicking in.

They pressed the district on what response they are getting from providers.

“We’re pushing very hard to do right by our students,” DiBartolo said.

Goodbye As, Bs and Cs? Chicago Public Schools to revisit grading during pandemic

2020-04-22T20:39:32+00:00

A new grading policy is in the works in Chicago Public Schools, where officials are weighing calls by the teachers union and others to shift to a pass/fail approach.

The district stuck with letter grades at the end of its third quarter last week, even as some educators voiced concern about grading students only days after the formal start of remote learning in Chicago.

Echoing guidance from the state, the district had decreed that students’ grades could only improve during the weeks of learning at home — a nod to disparities in access to technology and other challenges that can make remote learning tougher for some students. But some teachers argued that inequities magnified by the coronavirus crisis nevertheless make any kind of grading problematic.

District officials told the district governing board Wednesday that they are reexamining the issue of grading in consultation with the Chicago Teachers Union. They said they are trying to strike a balance between keeping students and schools accountable, and giving priority to students’ social and emotional needs during the pandemic.

“I feel strongly we need to create a system of checks and balances,” said schools chief Janice Jackson, echoing the position of some educators who have argued that students need incentives to log on and complete assignments. About the new policy in the works, she said,“we’ll put together something that’s complex and meets the needs of everybody.”

The union head, Jesse Sharkey, who addressed the board virtually during a truncated version of its monthly meeting, said a pass/fail or credit/no credit approach makes sense, calling it “the only way to account for the disruption a global pandemic has caused.” Students could opt to receive a letter grade.

“We are going to lose a certain amount of academic progress, and that’s inevitable,” he said.

In response to later questions from board members, LaTanya McDade, the district’s chief academic officer, said Chicago is researching how other districts across the country are handling grading and talking with the union and others. She noted some students still need grades for their college applications, and some have received letters from colleges reminding them they need to maintain their grade point averages.

Some districts are allowing students to opt in to letter grades. In Denver, high school students now have a choice: For each class, they can decide whether they want to receive a letter grade or would prefer their transcript to show that they earned or did not earn credit for the course. No teacher can give a student an F. In New York, schools still grade assignments, but officials have emphasized “flexibility” — like allowing more make-up work and latitude around student attendance. Officials there have said they are also weighing other options, as Chicago is.

McDade said Chicago is sensitive to the steep hurdles to learning many of its students face; officials plan to keep putting a premium on supporting students’ social and emotional well-being.

But she said, “We want to make sure we respect and honor the hard work students are doing right now. We have to find some middle ground.”

Jackson said she does not want a “situation where anything goes and everyone gets a pass.”

If students put in the work, they should have a chance to improve their standing. “My argument is if 10 kids show up, teach the 10 kids that show up,” she said.

District officials also said they are working on a more sophisticated approach to tracking how many students are engaging with schoolwork and how; the district will also collect data on what schoolwork teachers are assigning.

Some board members signaled support for changes to the grading policy.

School board member Elizabeth Todd-Breland, a college professor, noted that her university campus has shifted to a model in which students can choose between credit/no credit or letter grades. She suggested that approach could make sense for the district as well.

“Of course learning continues; I get this message loud and clear,” she said.

But, she said, “Our young people are going through lots of different things.”

In an informal Chalkbeat poll posted on Twitter just as third-quarter grades were due, 26.8% said the district should move ahead with grading, 57.1% said it should reconsider, and 16.1% were undecided. All together, 112 people responded.

Union secures promise of no layoffs, this year, for teachers, say leadership: Find daily updates on Chicago education in an epidemic

2020-04-02T16:40:00+00:00

With the number of Illinois COVID-19 cases still rising, it’s starting to sink in: Children are going to be out of school for several more weeks due to the worldwide coronavirus pandemic.

How will that impact learning?

We’ll be updating this blog regularly with news, insights, and information. Have tips or questions or suggestions of what we should cover? Email us at chicago.tips@chalkbeat.org.

For our previous blog chronicling the first 12 days of the crisis, click here.

Need help with homeschooling? We’re holding a virtual event with five Illinois educators on April 2. Learn more here.

🔗April 2

🔗Union secures promise of no layoffs, this year, for teachers, say leadership

As the landscape of teaching has shifted in a way that was almost unimaginable just weeks ago, union leadership assured Chicago teachers that there would be no layoffs or pay cuts, at least for this school year.

Speaking to teachers on a tele-town hall, Chicago Teachers Union leaders said they had secured an agreement on key personnel issues that included pay and benefit protections, as well as flexibility on grievance filing timelines, and a promise that teachers wouldn’t be placed on remediation plans during the coronavirus-related school closures.

“We have it in writing from CPS that we will continue to be paid. No teachers will be laid off for this school year,” union President Jesse Sharkey said on the call Wednesday night.

As teachers transition to remote learning that the district is mapping out in coming weeks, teachers on the call asked about workload, tenure, and the role of paraprofessionals.

A teacher named Samantha asked about the number of hours she was expected to be online, and how that time would be divided between planning and direct contact with students. “Our principal is very adamant that we sign up for 4-hour blocks,” Samantha said.

Another educator, Natalie, said she felt the hourlong teaching blocks were just too long for her fifth grade students. “It would be great to get some clarity as it pertains to age group and what is appropriate instructional time,” she said.

Sharkey said that, according to the union’s conversations with the district, school leadership had been instructed to approach remote learning with a “degree of understanding.” He also promised that the union would support teachers during this time.

“If employers are asking outrageous things of us, we want to push back,” he said, responding to a teacher who said his principal expected him to work during spring break.

The Chicago Teachers Union has been seen as a national model for “common good” union organizing, where unions fight for issues beyond the traditional bounds of wages and labor conditions, since current leaders came to power a decade ago. s unemployment and other social and economic fallout from the coronavirus response grow, Vice President Stacey Davis Gates, I will be up to the union to organize for more support for members and families.

“This is actually the calm before the storm,” Gates said, encouraging members to talk to families and keep a list of needs and concerns. “That is the kind of information that is going to help us make an ask.”

🔗How Chicago should spend $205 million in COVID-19 relief funds

We offered a first look on Wednesday about how much money Illinois school districts can expect to get from the federal government for coronavirus emergency measures, including ramping up spending on digital devices and remote learning. Find a lookup tool where you can search for your district here.

On Thursday, the Chicago Teachers Union zeroed in on the $205 million coming to Chicago Public Schools. In a statement, union President Jesse Sharkey called on the district to use the extra funds to spend on digital learning, as it has said it will do, but to also speed up hiring of nurses, social workers, and other staffers that were part of the most recent contract agreement.

“Needs include the hiring up of clinician staff to be able to deal one-on-one with student needs, family counseling and health needs,” he said. “Funds must go to set up school service infrastructure for full scale community schools—including trauma supports, housing and health services, small class sizes—services that must be deployed now and be fully up and running for students’ return to school.”

The union said it is calling on the district to staff up now, instead of spreading out hiring across five years as it has pledged to do.

Chicago Public Schools has estimated that the cost of fully implementing the latest contract with the teachers’ union and the union that represents some support staff will add $1.5 billion to its budget across five years. That was before COVID-19.

🔗April 1

🔗Chicago to cut number of food pickup sites by half starting next week

Chicago Public Schools, which has provided a staggering 2.8 million meals to families since school closures went into effect earlier this month, will consolidate its food distribution efforts starting Monday.

During spring break, which is scheduled to run April 6-10, the district will provide meals at 136 schools, down from 500-plus when the effort started. Then, starting April 13, Chicago will offer food at 276 locations.

The district said Wednesday it dropped sites where there was lowest demand, and that fewer sites will allow it to rotate front-line workers and administrators, freeing up some principals to help steer remote learning plans that are also rolling out April 13.

Here is the full list of sites for spring break week.

🔗Now we have an estimate of federal money for school emergency response

Illinois is expected to receive $569.5 million in emergency school funds from the federal government to spend on its coronavirus response, the state’s top educator has told district leaders. Of that, Chicago is slated to receive $205 million. Read more here.

🔗Two brothers. Little classwork. A lot of worries.

“I was overwhelmed before,” says 16-year-old Sarah Alli-Brown, a Chicago charter school student who is caring for her two young brothers while her mother is at work. “But now I’m overwhelmed even more.”

For so many students struggling to manage the many stresses in their lives — whether due to poverty, community violence, or caregiving responsibilities — school is the glue helping to hold it all together. What happens when school ceases to be? Chalkbeat national reporter Kalyn Belsha takes a look.

🔗March 31

🔗Illinois extends school closures

Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Tuesday that the statewide school closure mandate will extend to at least April 30, and that the order will include Chicago Public Schools.

The governor addressed the impact on students directly in his speech. Read more here.

🔗New rules for remote learning

With longer school closures looking like a reality, the state board of education issued new guidance for districts around remote learning. Here are five things to know.

🔗March 30

🔗Illinois tells schools they must draft a learning plan during closures

Illinois school districts, including Chicago, this week are releasing to parents more detailed guidelines for remote learning, now that guidance from the Illinois State Board of Education is in.

Late Friday evening, the state school board released a nearly 60-page document with recommendations from a 63-member remote learning advisory group. It spans such topics as attendance, grading, and instructional planning..

Schools must implement remote learning or e-learning to give students access to educators, the state said. The state will count any days missed from March 17-30 because of school closures as student attendance days that won’t be required to be made up. The state also recommends that schools adopt a pass/incomplete grading model so that students will not be penalized.

Chicago plans to release details of its plan Monday afternoon in a press conference with Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who has said that digital device distribution is a key priority of her administration. According to a 2018 survey, 145 of Chicago’s 500-plus schools provide devices for every student. Here’s what we know so far. We will report back with more later today.

🔗March 27

🔗More than 600 providers apply for emergency child care licenses statewide

More than 600 Illinois child care providers have applied for licenses to help care for children of first responders and health care professionals on the front lines of the coronavirus epidemic, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Friday.

Pritzker said that child care providers may apply for a one time grant starting Monday to help address any additional costs. Licensed homes may receive $750, centers with one or two classrooms may receive $2,000 and centers with three or more classrooms may receive $3,000.

Illinois earlier this week ordered child care centers for children under 5 to close, but allowed them to apply for an emergency license to stay open. The state has said that centers that close will not lose their public funding to care for low-income children. However, many centers also accept some private tuition, and owners have said they hope to benefit later from government aid for small businesses.

State public health officials on Friday announced 488 new cases of COVID-19 and eight additional deaths. That brings Illinois’ total count to 3,026 cases and 34 deaths as of Friday afternoon.

🔗How long could closures last in Illinois?

By the end of this week, four states had said they planned to extend school closures through the end of the school year.

Illinois isn’t there yet. Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s office said Friday that he will “continue monitoring the data that evolves daily and base his decisions off the science and recommendations from experts.”

In a call with reporters Friday afternoon, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said her team, including schools chief Janice Jackson and CPS leaders, is looking to the state for guidance and also consulting with leaders of other large districts.

Chicago Public Schools has said its campuses are closed at least through April 20, while a statewide school closure mandate extends through April 8.

Lightfoot said she is concerned about Chicago’s limitations when it comes to e-learning.

“It’s no secret we have a one-room schoolhouse when it comes to access to broadband, digital equipment that would help facilitate e-learning,” she said. “That’s something I’m very focused on and in active conversations with CPS about. It’s a challenge for us, but it’s a challenge I’m determined I’m going to meet. We owe it to our kids. We just do.”

Earlier in the week, the city’s school board granted district leaders the authority to spend $75 million on coronavirus response, including technology. The district said a remote learning plan was coming this week, and it was also weighing how it could purchase devices and distribute them in a way that would prioritize highest-need households first. But it did not offer specific plans. (More here on that.)

The mayor also said Friday that Chicago Public Schools had so far served more than 2 million meals.

But the demand isn’t equal across all school sites, and whether the school district could consolidate distribution sites is “actively under discussion,” Lightfoot said in response to a question from Chalkbeat.

Coronavirus cases among frontline school workers have impacted food distribution in other American cities.

“There are a number of different variables that we are looking at to make sure we are focusing our resources at areas of the city where we need it most,” the mayor said. “My hat is off to folks at CPS and to the frontline workers who’ve been doing a tremendous job to make sure their students and families are fed.”

🔗House passes federal stimulus bill that includes money for schools

The bill, which the Senate passed Thursday, includes $13.5 billion for schools for remote learning technology, costs associated with sanitizing school buildings, and paying for summer learning programs, among other coronavirus-related expenditures. Now it goes to President Donald Trump. Read more here.

🔗March 26

🔗Questions about emergency child care weigh on Chicago

One recurring question facing Chicago, and every other city in the country, is what to do about child care for health care workers, first responders, and other essential employees.

Chicago kept day cares and child care centers open longer than schools, but it ultimately shut them. The state has started issuing emergency licenses for some centers to keep operating and care for small groups of children. The state did not have an immediate answer to how many operators have applied for those licenses.

Chicago is offering free in-home child care through Sittercity. Some centers are also staying open through the emergency license program, but the city did not have a readily available number, either.

Responding to a public letter from the city’s teachers union that said the city was considering reopening schools near hospitals to care for children, Mayor Lori Lightfoot acknowledged that such a plan was under consideration. In response to union concerns about the safety of teachers who might be put at risk by working, the mayor emphasized that staff would be “volunteer.”

In response to questions from Chalkbeat later Thursday, the mayor’s office said that the plan to open emergency child care centers in schools is one of several contingency plans on the table.

“The mayor’s office is developing multiple contingency plans for providing emergency child care to health care and other essential workers in the event that such care is needed to ensure that our critical systems can continue to operate. The proposal in question is not being implemented at this time.”

“As announced on Monday, first responders are encouraged to take advantage of the city’s partnership with Sittercity, which has created a mechanism by which in-home care can be provided.”

🔗“Something miraculous has happened in Washington.”

Speaking Thursday about the bipartisan effort in the Senate to pass a federal bill that would provide relief for coronavirus, Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin said Thursday that “something miraculous had happened in Washington.”

“We’ve done something on a timely basis,” he quipped.

Durbin spoke as part of Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s daily press briefing on coronavirus and its impact. As of midday Thursday, Illinois has reported 2,538 cases and 26 deaths.

The stimulus bill, which must now go to the House, includes significant sums for schools. The biggest chunk: $13.5 billion to be distributed among states, which would have to pass most of that on to school districts and charter schools for buying technology for remote learning, sanitizing school buildings, and paying for summer learning programs. (Click here to read Chalkbeat coverage of the bill.)

Durbin praised provisions to help hospitals “hanging by a thread” to meet patients’ needs, small businesses, the airline industry, and households through cash payments.

“To some people that’s money they desperately need,” he said.

Meanwhile, Pritzker announced a new Illinois Covid Response Fund, which has already raised almost $23 million from philanthropic organizations, businesses and individuals, including $2 million from Pritzker and his wife. The fund, led by the governor’s sister, former U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, will distribute the dollars to local nonprofits and other organizations on the front lines of the state’s response to the pandemic.

🔗 It’s official: Illinois can waive standardized tests this spring

The federal government granted the Illinois State Board of Education permission to waive all federally required assessments and accountability measures for the current school year.

The federal Department of Education quickly approved the state board’s waiver application. This means that all schools across the state will maintain their current state ratings for next school year. Schools that receive extra state funds to improve achievement will continue to get those amounts next year.

We have good news! @USedGov let us know that our request to waive assessments, summative designations, and reporting on accountability metrics for the 2019-20 school year appears to meet all statutory requirements and that we can begin implementing these waivers.
— Illinois State Board of Education (@ISBEnews) March 25, 2020

🔗March 25

🔗CPS’ $75 million emergency fund

In a virtual meeting punctuated by the occasional technology glitch and appearance from a child, Chicago’s Board of Education on Wednesday unanimously approved $75 million for the coronavirus response, allowing leaders to sign contracts and make purchases without prior board approval through June.

District officials said they need the flexibility to spend on cleaning schools, providing school meals, paying frontline staff — and filling gaps in student access to computers and the internet.

Until now, Chicago Public Schools has been largely mum about the district’s plans to ramp up remote learning — though officials promised more details later this week.

Read more here about the district’s plans to double down on devices. And click here to read more details about the $75 million spend, which the union called a “blank check.”

🔗College goers face unprecedented uncertainty

Chicago junior Luz Mayancela posed in 2019 with J.B. Pritzker, now Illinois governor, at Chicago’s Soldier Field, where she took part in an ROTC color guard.

Chicago has seen an increase in students entering college, a source of pride for the district over the past few years. But there’s widespread concern among students, high school counselors, and educators that coronavirus could seriously interrupt that progress this year. Here’s how some students are coping with the disruption.

Want to read more about the impact of coronavirus and public schools in Illinois? Find our previous coverage here.

Willing to share your story about the impact on your classroom or on your family? Write us as chicago.tips@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago to buy more computers and ramp up virtual learning, with details coming this week

2020-03-26T00:50:05+00:00

Denver Public Schools is gearing up to launch virtual training for teachers to help shift instruction online. New York is handing out 300,000 computers, with about 175,000 distributed so far.

Until now, Chicago Public Schools has been largely mum about the district’s plans to ramp up remote learning — though officials promised more details later this week.

The district’s governing board on Wednesday unanimously approved $75 million for the coronavirus response, allowing leaders to sign contracts and make purchases without prior board approval through June. District officials said they need the flexibility to spend on cleaning schools, providing school meals, paying frontline staff — and filling gaps in student access to computers and the internet.

“We are committed to doing whatever we can to bridge the digital divide,” said the district’s Chief Education Officer LaTanya McDade. “Our teams have been working day and night to develop new strategies for our students to continue their education.”

District CEO Janice Jackson said the district needs to move quickly because of a significant backlog as districts and other groups across the country have rushed to order digital devices.

Profound income disparities among its students and the size of the district pose a challenge as Chicago seeks to roll out an effective and equitable e-learning strategy, which requires educator training, added tech support, resources for diverse and English learners and more. With the possibility that schools could remain shuttered through June, it is also increasingly a necessary effort to keep learning on track for roughly 300,000 students.

Some educators told Chalkbeat this week that they are eager to help their students keep up their academic momentum remotely but need more guidance and support. The Chicago Teachers Union has called on the district to prioritize addressing disparities in student access to technology.

Wednesday’s regular monthly board meeting heralded an unprecedented shift to technology: It was the first held solely via videoconference, with as many as 1,200 viewers tuning in at times.

There were small connectivity glitches, and board Vice President Sendhil Revuluri’s young daughter made a short unscheduled appearance, but the meeting otherwise ran smoothly. The board did significantly restrict the time allowed for public comment.

School board members pressed district leaders for details about remote learning. Top officials largely demurred, saying that they are awaiting state guidance, but promised to share more later.

Jackson said the district has been working to survey families and identify areas with the highest technology needs. She said the district has started ordering additional devices and will soon release the criteria for distributing them to families to ensure those who need them most get them first.

She acknowledged the district is facing a device backlog.

“We are getting in line as quickly as possible,” she said. “Our ability to move quickly and nimbly is critically important.”

Jackson said the district plans to leverage contributions from donors and businesses, and suggested some have already stepped up but did not provide details.

Officials said they hope federal aid will offset at least some of the technology costs and stressed that the district might not spend the entire $75 million the board authorized.

Before the meeting, Jennifer Johnson, the Chicago Teachers Union’s chief of staff, said union leaders have tried to engage the district on addressing prolonged closures.

“I can’t say that I feel there is a comprehensive plan that’s going to get us equity,” Johnson said. “That’s going to be incredibly challenging.”

The state Board of Education has been seeking input from educators as it works on crafting guidelines for the district. Johnson said the need for training has come up repeatedly. She believes Chicago and the state should tap the expertise and ideas of some of their educators rather than leaning on commercial vendors for training.

“This is not going to be the same as school in person and we shouldn’t pretend it could be,” Johnson said.

Some Chicago educators said they are hungry for direction to continue teaching and helping students long distance. They said they are impatient to see students get their hands on devices.

“Whatever conversations are happening are happening on the administrative end,” said A. Jene Young, a special education classroom assistant at Sherman School of Excellence.

She said her small school could provide a device to each of its students, but it grapples with concerns about the possibility of damaged and lost devices.

District spokeswoman Emily Bolton said the new guidelines the district is working on will clarify strategies for remote learning as well as different platforms and resources for engaging students.

“Many schools are currently engaging students in coursework,” she said. “The updated guidance will seek to provide clear information on structure and expectations for student engagement.”

Live updates on coronavirus and Chicago schools: Illinois infant tests positive for coronavirus

2020-03-22T23:04:00+00:00

As the number of the new coronavirus cases worldwide continues to rise, we are monitoring the impact on Chicago schools and their families and will post updates here.

Have questions or want to tell us about the impact on your family? Email us at chicago.tips@chalkbeat.org.

🔗March 22

🔗Infant case announced in Illinois

Illinois announced 296 additional confirmed cases of coronavirus Sunday afternoon, a 39% daily increase that brings the total cases statewide to 1,049. The new cases include an infant. A week ago, Illinois reported 93 confirmed cases.

Officials said the infant did not contract coronavirus from the mother, and there is no evidence that the virus is transmitted through breast milk or amniotic fluid.

Health officials said three more Illinoisans had died because of COVID-19.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced a new website, Serve.Illinois.gov, intended to help connect volunteers and volunteer organizations with people and places in need.

The governor also responded to a Sunday morning tweet from President Donald Trump that chastised Pritzker and “a very small group of certain other governors” for criticizing the federal government’s response to the coronavirus outbreak.

Pritzker has criticized the federal government for failing to provide states with tests or emergency response equipment, such as masks.

Addressing the call-out briefly on Sunday afternoon, Pritzker described himself as “a pretty even-keeled guy” but that he was finding it hard to “contain his anger” regarding Trump’s response to the crisis. “I said the other day that this is a time for serious people, not the carnival barkers in the cheap seats. All I can say is: Get to work or get out of the way.”

In Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot praised Pritzker’s leadership in a pointed tweet aimed at the president. She announced that the city will partner with Sittercity, a firm that uses an online platform to connect caregivers with families with children or older adults in need of care.

Lightfoot said a new website, sittercity.com/chicagoresponds, will help first responders and health care workers in particular. On Friday, the governor mandated the state’s day care centers to close, though centers may use an emergency licensing process if they care for children of first responders and want to stay open.

Officials have also confirmed cases of coronavirus connected to Chicago’s Jones College Prep High School and Loyola University. Chicago Public Schools are closed through April 20.

You wasted precious months when you could've taken action to protect Americans & Illinoisans.

You should be leading a national response instead of throwing tantrums from the back seat.

Where were the tests when we needed them?

Where's the PPE?

Get off Twitter & do your job. https://t.co/WESJITCAwg
— Governor JB Pritzker (@GovPritzker) March 22, 2020

🔗March 21

Pritzker announces expanded childcare support for emergency workers

Healthcare employees working during the new coronavirus pandemic will get a boost thanks to Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s plan to give grants to child care centers that will care for the children of nurses, doctors, and other emergency personnel.

The governor also issued a “call to action” for retired healthcare workers to return to work.

More than 150 centers have already applied for the new grant, Pritzker said on Saturday at his daily press briefing.

“I want to take a moment to thank our childcare workers from the bottom of my heart,” Pritzker said. “We could not keep our essential workers without our childcare workers.”

Illinois announced 168 new cases on Sunday, bringing the statewide total of confirmed COVID-19 infections to 753. On Friday, Pritzker issued a “shelter in place” order, limiting residents from going out for any but essential services such as groceries or medicine, until April 7.

🔗March 20

🔗Statewide school closures extend to April 8

As the number of nationwide cases topped 16,000, Gov. J.B. Pritzker issued a “stay-at-home” order Friday and said school closures statewide would be extended to April 8.

The state’s original closure mandate went through March. 30.

On Thursday, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot extended Chicago’s public school closure mandate through April 20.

“I want to be clear. This is not a lockdown. This is not marshal law,” said Lightfoot, who said the city is closing all parks and libraries but that residents may still go to grocery stores, doctors’ offices, and out to exercise. The city will continue to operate essential services, such as public transit and garbage pick-up.

“This is the new normal for now.”

🔗Advanced Placement tests to continue but look different

Students in Advanced Placement classes will be able to take the end-of-course exams, the College Board announced Friday — but the tests will look very different than usual.

There will be no in-person exams. Read more here.

🔗Testing canceled

Schools will not have to administer federally required tests this year, President Trump and the U.S. Department of Education announced Friday — an unprecedented but unsurprising move in the wake of widespread school closures due to the new coronavirus.

The announcement comes a day after Chicago Public Schools extended closures through April 20 and said it was applying to the state for waivers to suspend its school rating system and spring testing.

🔗March 19

🔗Mayor Lori Lightfoot extends school closures

Chicago schools will stay closed through April 20 in an effort to stem the exponential growth of the new coronavirus, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said in a Thursday evening address.

The school district said moments after the mayor’s announcement that it will seek a one-year waiver from the state to suspend school ratings and spring standardized testing. Under the proposal, ratings from the current year would be carried forward. Read more here.

🔗Virtual school loses bid to stay open

Even as districts around the state rush to figure out distance learning plans for students in the wake of the coronavirus school shutdowns, the state school board voted Wednesday to close Chicago’s only virtual charter school for failure to improve its academics. The vote happened as Illinois is shutting down its charter commission and transferring authority back to the state school board. Read more here.

🔗March 18

🔗‘Very real possibility’ that closures could extend past March 30, state board says

On the day that Illinois’ count of COVID-19 cases jumped 75% to 288 confirmed cases, the Illinois State Board of Education acknowledged that school closures could stretch longer than announced.

“We understand that these are very uncertain times and there is a very real possibility that school closures could extend beyond March 30,” Board Chairman Darren Reisberg said.

However, the board didn’t specify a timeframe, nor the likelihood of an extension. Already one state, Kansas, has closed schools for the rest of the school year, and governors of Colorado and California have suggested their states might do likewise.

Reisberg said that district staff will continue to be paid and that educators are required to provide learning opportunities for students. But students’ work will not be graded because the closure does not count toward instructional days.

Schools also must provide youths up to age 18 with free meals.

The board did not discuss whether it would waive state testing requirements.

🔗Big jump in COVID-19 cases

In his daily briefing, Gov. J.B. Pritzker announces largest single day jump in COVID-19 cases in the state. Illinois has 288 confirmed cases, up from 160 the day before. Health officials specifically address playdates and discourage families from organizing them (which we blogged about yesterday).

Dr. Ngozi Ezike, Illinois Department of Public Health director, to school children: DON'T undermine the school closures by now creating playdates with a bunch of your friends with whom you would have been at school.
— Mila Koumpilova (@MilaKoumpilova) March 18, 2020

🔗Day cares open but struggling

As in several states, Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s mandate to close schools did not include freestanding pre-kindergarten and day care centers. At Little Inspirations on the Southeast Side of Chicago, founder and Executive Director Peg Dunne Pavelec has seen a significant drop in attendance. She operates two centers that together can care for over 100 children from 6-week-old infants to 6-year-olds.

But Tuesday, only 16 of the 85 children enrolled showed up — a 19% attendance rate. She expects to see even fewer tomorrow.

Parents need to go to work, Pavelec said. She has instructed her teachers to sanitize toys, send children home if they are sick, and wash hands frequently. To limit visitors, she has cancelled tours of their facilities.

While trying to maintain some sense of normalcy, Pavelec is concerned about what happens next. “It’s hard for center directors to make the right choice about staying open or close; it’s not like the schools where it’s just mandated, but we are an essential service,” she said. She has so many questions. “If we continue through this week, what’s going to happen on the government level? What’s going to happen in terms of the national and community response?”

Pavelec is concerned about the long-term financial strain of operating with so few students. She doesn’t get reimbursed when families don’t send their children to her.

“Will it make sense for us to stay open? Or will there come a time where we close? I don’t know how to ask for tuition next month if this is still happening,” Pavelec said.

🔗State board holds first meeting in time of coronavirus

As the spread of the coronavirus has closed schools across Illinois, the changes wrought by the virus herald a new slate of responsibilities for the state school board, which may soon be called to make decisions about standardized tests, the length of the school year, and more.

Wednesday is the first Illinois State Board of Education meeting since the spread of COVID-19, and we are monitoring it today. The meeting is audiocast to the public at isbe.net; the board said it would post a video recording at a later date.

The board is expected to vote on whether to take on oversight of two charter schools the Chicago district is trying to close and approve a request for proposals on e-learning.

We also expect COVID-19 to be a big part of the discussion.

While some of the board members met in person in Springfield, a handful of others called in by phone.

School board president Darren Reisberg opened the meeting by applauding the leadership of Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who recently closed all schools in Illinois and promised that districts would not be penalized for swift changes they had to make to schooling.

“None of us were taught to handle such a wide ranging crisis, but here we are,” Resiberg said. “Thank you for adjusting your routines, priorities and entire lives during this unprecedented worldwide emergency.”

🔗A day without school

One Indiana teacher has video-chatted with her blind students, who are trying to learn fractions at home. A Chicago teacher is trying to teach “Romeo and Juliet” through online hours. Here’s what a day without school looked like for teachers, parents, and students across the country.

🔗March 17

🔗A strange new reality sets in

“Home school” is the new reality for Illinois families. Teachers: Help make it better. We’ve put up a brief survey and we plan to share the answers with parents.

🔗One death due to COVID-19; statewide meal delivery for children

Illinois on Tuesday confirmed 160 cases of coronavirus in 15 counties in Illinois with cases ranging from 9 to 91. That’s an increase from 105 the day before.

In his daily press conference, Gov. J.B. Pritzker reported the state’s first death due to COVID-19: a Chicago woman in her 60s with an underlying medical condition who tested positive earlier this month after interacting with a known case. He said 22 new cases have been reported at DuPage County nursing home, with 18 residents infected and four staff.

The governor restated that all K-12 schools around the state will continue to distribute meals to children who are eligible for free and reduced lunch through delivery and parent-pickup. The governor asked that schools expand their programs to include all school children and any children enrolled in an Illinois school regardless of age.

🔗State school board issues clears up pay question

During the two-week closure mandated by the governor, educators across the state will receive their normal pay which includes salary, hourly and stipend pay, and benefits. Educators and school leaders are required to continue education of students, ensure meals, and other support for students.

This announcement was made on Tuesday in a joint statement between the governor’s office and the Illinois Education Association, Illinois Federation of Teachers, Illinois Association of School Administrators, Illinois Principals Association and the Illinois State Board of Education.

“These are unprecedented times, but we are all together with the goal of caring for students. Our organizations are truly inspired by the phenomenal cooperation shown across the state and encourage all of our members to be reasonable, creative, and generous while determining what’s best for our students in Illinois,” read the statement.

🔗Union calls on state to suspend spring testing

There’s a call today from the Chicago Teachers Union for the state school board to suspend standardized testing. The union is also calling on Illinois to adjust grad requirements “so no student is held back a grade level or prevented from graduating because of the disruption to the academic year.”

A spokeswoman from the state school board said the U.S. Department of Education has indicated that it will make waivers available that could give states flexibility to not offer tests this year. But, she said, the board of education “will not know and be able to determine exactly what waivers it is going to be able to pursue until we understand the full scope of the closure.”

🔗Avoiding playdates

As families grapple with the reality of being homebound, the question of playdates has come up frequently in neighborhood social media groups. What’s the guidance on that?

A spokesperson from the state department of public health told Chalkbeat that new guidance is forthcoming, but that group playdates should be avoided.

“Residents should continue to practice social distancing measures, such as working from home when possible, limiting the amount of time spent in the community. These measures will help reduce the number of people who become sick at any given time and the possibility of exhausting our health care resources.”

🔗Clarity about grading policies in Chicago

Are schools going to grade the take home “enrichment packets” that schools sent home with Chicago students? (See our 7 questions from parents, asked and answered. This is one of them.)

The answer is no, and that’s in line with guidance from the Illinois State Board of Education, which has also recommended that districts not grade during closure periods.

Chicago Public Schools reiterated this today on social media.

We’ve received questions about graded assignments during CPS closure: district-provided enrichment activities should not be graded, and no teacher-directed work sent home with students during this period should be graded.
— Chicago Public Schools (@ChiPubSchools) March 17, 2020

🔗March 16

🔗Seven questions asked and answered

Here are answers to seven of Chicago parents’ most pressing questions, from whether school will really be back in session on Mar. 31 to whether “enrichment packets” will be graded.

🔗In union town hall ahead of school closures, teachers question e-learning, salaries

In a tele-town hall on Sunday night, attended by 4,000 people via the internet, educators peppered the Chicago Teachers Union with questions about e-learning, pay schedules, and plans were for students needing special learning accommodations.

The barrage of questions represent the uncertainty and confusion students and teachers feel about Chicago’s unprecedented school closures, set to begin Tuesday and extend through until March 30.

Schools were in session today on Monday, March 16. Pritzker announced the school closures Friday evening, giving teachers little time to prepare enrichment activities and contact plans for students.

‘We have one copy machine at my school, and I am worried that it is going to break down,’ said Shayna, one of the teachers on the call, who did not say her full name or at which school she teaches.

Union leaders on the call stressed the unusual circumstances, and demanded accommodations and supports for educators.

“Teachers are going to do what they can — it’s enrichment during a school shut down and international pandemic,” union President Jesse Sharkey said.

Educators also asked about paychecks and health insurance — both expected to be interrupted — and whether they would be taking attendance during virtual learning. Union leaders encouraged staff to submit receipts for cleaning supplies they purchased in the initial rush to keep schools clean as news of the pandemic spread, and to check amended guidance on how to handle any requests for leave.

Some teachers were concerned about being exposed to the virus when they went to school on Monday. Sharkey suggested they exercise judgment about their own health, and consider using a sick day, stressing that “the overriding concern is your health.”

Stacey Davis Gates, vice president of the union, acknowledged that the weeks of social distancing, and time away from students, would be difficult. The union was working with the district to organize well-being checks on particularly vulnerable students.

The union was also planning to start a blog for members to “experience this together.”

🔗State weighs in on a critical question for child care centers: Funding during the crisis

Illinois is out with more information for day cares and preschools. We wrote Sunday about how those who run preschools and child care centers are in a tough spot. Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Friday ordered K-12 schools to close but left out day cares to provide for children of first responders, hospital workers, and other emergency personnel. Read that story here.

The state said Monday it won’t force freestanding child care centers and day cares to close. But it will extend funding and relax strict requirements that dock funding when attendance drops. About 150 child care center owners over the weekend signed a letter to the governor asking for more funding flexibility and for assistance with emergency funding for hourly workers if they did need to close.

Monday the state said that programs funded through the Illinois State Board of Education, federal Head Start programs, and the city of Chicago will not lose government funding because of the coronavirus crisis. The directive said that centers that do close must pay workers — many centers accept a mix of public funding and private tuition and the directive did not spell out how centers will make up for lost tuition.

“For programs funded by any or all of these funding streams, programs are expected to continue to pay all staff per their regular work schedule during any closures due to the public health emergency,” the notice reads.

Congress is considering a federal package that would help small businesses meet payroll; that would include day cares, the notice reads.

🔗Preparing, or not, for e-learning as schools close

We heard from teachers over the weekend who were hustling to put together learning packets and assemble online passwords for students who have access to Internet. We want to hear from educators: What are you planning for your students during the closures? Tell us at chicago.tips@chalkbeat.org

Educators in #Chicago: How are you preparing for a shift to remote learning or enrichment planning for your students during the quarantine? How much guidance have you received from your school's administration? DM us or get us at https://t.co/KweQkffDqP at https://t.co/LWCrgRMLV5
— Chalkbeat Chicago (@chalkbeatCHI) March 16, 2020

🔗March 15

🔗Another case surfaces connected to Chicago Public Schools

In an email sent out to parents and staff Sunday night, Chicago Public Schools confirmed that someone at Sheridan Math and Science Academy in Bridgeport tested positive and the school would be closed Monday. The district referred only to a “member” of the academy and did not specify if the person was a teacher, other staffer, or student there. Read more here.

This is the third known case connected to a Chicago public school. Earlier today, administrators at the Noble Network announced a case connected to a Mansueto High School staffer. A week ago, a special education aide at Vaughn Occupational High School was the first case connected to a Chicago school.

Chicago schools will close Tuesday as part of a statewide K-12 school shutdown ordered by Gov. J.B. Pritzker.

🔗Noble Network closes schools after staff member tests positive for novel coronavirus

The Noble charter network, which educates over 12,000 children in Chicago, will close Monday after a staff member tested positive for the novel coronavirus.

The network did not release information about the Mansueto school staffer nor when the test was result was released. Schools will be closed for everything except for food services at some campuses.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker has ordered all K-12 schools to close from Tuesday, as a means to help control the spread of the virus that causes the COVID-19 disease. Noble will close one day early.

Citing logistical challenges, the network will provide food service at only seven of its campuses on Tuesday: Pritzker, Noble Street, Hansberry, DRW, Comer Middle, Baker, and Butler for children at all 18 of its schools.

Noble operates independently of Chicago Public Schools.

🔗

🔗Pritzker orders restaurants and bars closed statewide, promises students access to school meals

Children in Illinois will continue to have access to school breakfast and lunch even amid the statewide school closure, Gov. J.B. Pritzker vowed Sunday. He also announced he is ordering all bars and restaurants statewide to close from Monday evening as part of Illinois’ coronavirus response, though deliveries, drive-throughs and curbside pickups will be allowed.

Pritzker said the state Board of Education has obtained a federal waiver to continue providing meals during the closures. In Chicago, he said, schoolchildren can pick up free breakfast and lunch at any school — even if that’s not the school they attend and regardless of whether they qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.
Illinois now has 93 confirmed coronavirus cases, health officials said.

The governor also said he approached numerous food manufacturers to donate meals to food banks to provide free dinner to schoolchildren as well. Pritzker said the response was overwhelmingly positive.

Separately, Pritzker said he had extracted a commitment from Vice President Mike Pence to double the number of screeners at O’Hare International Airport, where heightened screening of travelers from Europe led to long waits Saturday. Pritzker called the backlogs an “unacceptable and frankly dangerous situation,” pinning responsibility on the federal government.

About his decision to shutter restaurants and bars through March 30, he said it was a tough but prudent step. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot warned businesses that the city will strictly enforce the governor’s directive.

Pritzker said he has been heartened by the state’s response to the outbreak so far, from both officials and the public.

“I believe in you,” he said. “I am going to fight like hell in the weeks ahead.”

🔗March 14

🔗First cases of COVID-19 in Central and Southern Illinois

During a press conference with Illinois public health officials Saturday afternoon, Governor J.B. Pritzker announced 18 additional cases of novel coronavirus in Central and Southern Illinois.

The total number of cases throughout the state is now 64.

While most have been concentrated in Cook County, current cases have been found in Cumberland, DuPage, St. Clair and Woodford. There are seven new cases in Chicago, four in suburban Cook, one in Kane, and one in Lake.

The recent case in DuPage is a woman in her 60s residing in a long-term care facility, and the Illinois Department of Health is currently working on the ground to identify her current contacts.

Pritzker repeated the need for social distancing, “If you’re young and healthy, we need you to follow social distancing guidelines too. You may only have mild symptoms for a few days and think that you’re just fine but you can have the unintended, tragic effect of spreading COVID-19 to others who may be more vulnerable.”

While K-12 schools are closed and, along with them, pre-K classrooms connected to those campuses, independent pre-k and daycare facilities do not fall under the closed schools mandate, the governor said, since most of those are smaller.

🔗March 13

🔗Chicago makes plans for families

While its schools will be suddenly closed for two weeks to guard against the coronavirus, Chicago will coordinate food distribution centers, run drop-off child care programs at 18 parks, and on Monday send home packets of schoolwork with students.

But Chicago Public Schools won’t be rolling out a robust remote-learning plan, and whether it will reschedule spring break is still up in air. Read more here.

🔗Governor announces statewide closure

Illinois will become the eighth state to close schools due to the coronavirus outbreak. The closures go into effect Tuesday to give teachers time to prepare.

“I understand what this means for the families and caretakers of the 2 million students,” Pritzker said, “and none of the choices we have had to make over the last week have been easy or simple. All these choices have cascading effects for citizens and vulnerable populations.” This is a developing story.

🔗Here’s a running list of Illinois district closures

The number of Illinois districts announcing school closures now tops 60, affecting nearly 300,0000 students. Here’s the running list.

🔗Chicago’s rationale so far for not closing schools

The mayor says she’s assessing and reassessing the situation multiple times a day. Read what she told reporters this morning here.

Meanwhile, Miami-Dade, the nation’s fourth largest school district, announced it was closing schools.

🔗New guidance from the CDC on closures

In revised guidance issued Friday, the CDC suggested that early, short- to medium- term closures don’t slow the progression of COVID-19 in a community. Longer closures — eight to 20 weeks — might retard the virus’ community spread, it said. But modeling shows that other recommended measures like handwashing and isolating patients at home could have a greater effect, the federal agency advised.

Places like Hong Kong that closed schools haven’t had more success in reducing the novel coronavirus spread than have areas like Singapore that kept campuses open, the CDC observed.

On the other hand, observers of the COVID-19 epidemic in Italy have emphatically advised early social isolation, including closing schools, to slow down the virus’s progress through communities.

🔗Chicago Teachers Union takes a stronger stance

The Chicago Teachers Union is calling for the immediate closure of all schools in the district, the country’s third largest. The union said the step is necessary to hamper the spread of coronavirus.

It’s a pivot for a union that, on Thursday, had called on Chicago to proactively close schools for a single day — Election Day — since hundreds double as polling places and many community members would be in and out to vote, potentially putting children at risk.

Jennifer Johnson, the union’s chief of staff, pointed to the announcement this morning that schools in Los Angeles, the second largest district in the nation, are slated to close.

“This is the time to be proactive and cautious,” she said in an interview with Chalkbeat. “CPS, too, needs to get ahead of this.”

District and city officials have said the current risk the virus outbreak poses does not justify the disruption that a mass district closure would cause — though they stress they continue to evaluate the situation as it unfolds. They have noted that children appear to be at a lower risk for contracting the virus and becoming seriously ill, and they said closing all schools will mean significant hardship for many students and families.

CTU noted in a Friday statement that most district schools meet the criteria Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker outlined Thursday about community gatherings: discouraging events of 250 people or more and banning those that bring together more than 1,000 residents.

Union officials also want the city and district to work together on a remote learning strategy and a meal delivery plan to ensure students who rely on school meals still have access to them. The union once again called for the suspension of the district’s school ratings policy, which factors in school attendance. The union is also demanding that the city of Chicago declare a state of emergency and place a moratorium on evictions and utility bills.

🔗Closures so far in Illinois

The Illinois State Board of Education has started tracking school- and district-wide closures across the state. So far here’s what we know as of Friday morning: As of now, there have been more than 30 districts closed and over 100,000 students out of class. That’s about 5% of students statewide. In all, there are 3,872 schools, 852 districts and 2 million students across the state.

🔗Archdiocese closing schools

The Archdiocese of Chicago tells parents it will close schools beginning Monday in Cook and Lake counties.

In a press conference Friday morning at City Hall, Mayor Lori Lightfoot tells reporters that she spoke with Cardinal Blase Cupich about the Archdiocese decision. But closing public schools in Chicago has cascading consequences. She said she’s constantly assessing the situation.

Factoring into the decision to keep schools open, said Lightfoot, is the case of the special education teacher’s aide at Vaughn Occupational High School. As far as officials know to this point, no one else at the school has tested positive for coronavirus (two relatives of the woman who had no contact with the school have confirmed cases), the mayor said.

She said she’s frequently in contact with the governor’s office throughout the day on the issue of school openings and closings. “The governor has concerns about schools across state. We’re having multiple conversations every single day about what we’re doing, why we’re doing what we’re doing, and using data to drive the decision. In the event we need to take action, we will do that in partnership with the state.”

If schools have to close, it will be done to mitigate burden on families, Lightfoot says. She spoke with @CardinalBCupich about decision to close @archchicago schools.
— Heather Cherone (@HeatherCherone) March 13, 2020

🔗Flexibility on food delivery weighs on states

Children living in poverty in the United States rely on school for meals, and that reality has factored prominently into some districts’ decisions to keep schools open.

Illinois officials confirmed Thursday that they have applied for a waiver for a federally funded school lunch/meal program that requires students to eat in a group setting — getting the waiver would give districts flexibility in how to design meal delivery programs should the need arise.

Politico has reported that the USDA said that it will waive the requirement on a state-by-state basis, but the waiver only covers districts where more than 50% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch. (In Illinois, 48.8% of students are eligible to receive free or reduced-price lunches, but many districts, including Chicago, have numbers that are considerably higher.) The USDA has done this in the past with school districts during natural disasters but the coronavirus will present new issues.

🔗March 12

🔗Evanston Skokie District 65 to close schools starting Monday

Officials say that the district will implement an e-learning plan. Other suburban districts on Chicago’s North Shore also announced closures, including New Trier and several of its elementary school feeder districts and all Northfield Township districts.

In Oak Park, in the city’s western suburbs, officials at the elementary district and high school initiated an e-learning week, starting Friday and running through next week, with Spring Break to follow. “Students will not physically come to school, but these will be attendance days where they will have coursework and assignments,” the high school said.

🔗No statewide school closure in Illinois

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker talks Thursday about measures to counter the spread of the novel coronavirus. He is flanked on the left by an interpreter and on the right by Illinois public health Director Ngozi Ezike and Chicago public health Commissioner Allison Arwady.

As the number of confirmed Illinois cases of coronavirus rises to 32, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker issued a stark message to state residents Thursday evening about shutting down sporting events and large gatherings, but he stopped short of an edict for school closure.

School closures will still be community decisions, he said at a Thursday evening press conference, stressing that many children in the state “receive essential services from the schools they attend.”

“We are not closing our schools, but we are monitoring the situation on a day to day basis.”

He advised schools to cancel assemblies.

On Thursday, governors of Ohio and Maryland both issued statewide edicts to close schools.

Chicago schools will remain open at this time, said Mayor Lori Lightfoot. “We are a city that is well prepared to address this crisis.”

Of the state’s seven new cases, one is a Chicago child who is at home in good condition, health officials said.

Read the latest here.

🔗Complaints resurface about dirty schools. Surface wipes are on back order.

As the coronavirus has spread, so have concerns about cleanliness in schools. Some districts in communities where cases have been confirmed, including Lombard in the western suburbs and in Washington and Virginia, have planned closures for a single, deep cleaning day out of concern.

Chicago so far has promised daily disinfections of “high-touch” areas such as doorknobs and handrails. The district said last week it was delivering more cleaning supplies and hand sanitizer to schools and asking janitorial staff to check bathrooms daily for soap. Over the weekend, it said supplies were on “pre-order,” but did not clarify when they might arrive.

Apparently, some schools are still waiting, and teachers have started complaining on social media and in private messages to Chalkbeat that efforts to deep clean are falling short. Sanitation concerns are a familiar issue in Chicago, stemming from the district’s decision, during a budget crunch in 2014, to privatize janitorial services to two contract companies, Aramark and Sodexo, and failures of some schools to subsequently pass inspections.

One teacher, at James Hedges Fine and Performing Arts School, told Chalkbeat on Wednesday the janitor had been out for a week. Another said her school custodian had only been approved to work an extra hour.

Another teacher said he was making his own hand sanitizer from rubbing alcohol and aloe vera.

The district said Thursday that operations managers are visiting schools daily to check on custodial staff and that it was implementing additional cleanliness audits in wake of coronavirus concerns. It also said it had authorized additional custodial overtime during evening and weekend hours.

As for supplies, some, like surface wipes, are caught on back order, a Chicago Public Schools spokeswoman wrote in an email. “Wipes are among the most in-demand items in the country and we are scheduled to receive a shipment soon and will distribute as soon as possible.”

But she said there is no shortage of cleaning supplies. “Every school has a minimum of two cases of soap supplies and up to 60 additional cases of hand soap supplies (depending on the size of the school and student body/utilization) readily available,” she said. Warehouses also had ample supplies, she wrote, adding that custodians are supposed to more frequently restock schools as campus supplies dwindle.

Coronavirus is thought to spread mainly between people who are in close contact with one another. It also can spread by people touching contaminated surfaces and then touching their mouth or nose.

Teaching in a dirty classroom (again). The CPS response has been slow and insufficient. Our morning custodian has only been approved for 1 extra HOUR to sanitize doors and surfaces AND told me she’s been buying her own cleaning supplies. School serves 950 S + staff.
— MsGRoxs (@MsGRoxs) March 11, 2020

😂 this was brought up in our LSC meeting yesterday by parents. I let them know many teachers were brining in their own supplies. We don’t have time to wait.
— Julia Ciciora (@JuliaCiciora) March 12, 2020

they are here, but there aren't enough. And, the custodial staff that cleans my room hasn't done any extra cleaning. Desk tops aren't cleaned if I don't do it. Floors are filthy and haven't been mopped in weeks. Schools are hotbeds for spreading, I would think.
— Alison Eichhorn (@alison_eichhorn) March 12, 2020

🔗Conversations in the classroom

Students have questions. Many questions.

How are educators handling them and is there an approach that seems particularly effective? We want to hear from you.

Chicago educators: How are you handling the conversation about #COVID19 in your classroom? We're eager to hear from PK-8 AND high school teachers/social workers/counselors. DM us or email us at chicago.tips@chalkbeat.org @TeachPlusIL @Ed4Excellence @TFA_ChicagoNWI @ctulocal1
— Chalkbeat Chicago (@chalkbeatCHI) March 12, 2020

🔗‘It’s time to talk about bias and bullying.’

Angie Hong, a parent, writes: “As news of the new coronavirus made its way around the world, I asked my nine-year-old, American-born, Korean son if anyone at school was making comments to him about the coronavirus.

“Yeah,” he said. “They yelled across the room, ‘You’re Chinese, you have coronavirus!’”

Hong lives in North Carolina, but her first-person account of how she addressed bias and bullying with her child — and took the matter to administrators at her son’s school — may prove a helpful read for any parent or educator faced with similar conversations.

🔗More closures nationally

Treadwell Elementary off of Given Avenue in Memphis.

Cancellations keep rolling in nationally. In New York, two South Bronx schools closed after a student tested positive for coronavirus, and in Memphis, schools will be closed from Friday until March 30, the district said Thursday morning. Earlier this week, delayed communication to Spanish-speaking parents about a school staffer’s quarantine had educators in that city concerned.

Hinsdale High School 86 has cancelled classes after a student at Hinsdale South was exposed to COVID-19. According to the school’s statement, they would have instituted an remote learning day but decided to use an emergency day since they received late notice. If school should remain closed longer, the district will use remote learning.

Chicago Public Schools said earlier in the week that it did not plan to close additional schools. One of Chicago’s most high-profile private schools, Chicago Lab, announced Thursday that it would start remote learning on March 30. “The Director of the Laboratory Schools will be in contact soon with more information, including about the duration of the remote learning period,” a release said. Organizers also have canceled a large suburban college information fair in Rosemont planned for the weekend.

🔗March 11

🔗Chicago teachers take aim at spring break travel company

Chicago educators took to social media Wednesday to lash out at a student tour operator for not refunding a Simeon High School spring break trip to Greece. The school district suspended the trip because of coronavirus concerns, and the tour company, EF Educational Tours, offered to postpone the trip but not repay fees for the 13 students, according to the Chicago Teachers Union.

On Twitter, the union called the stance an example of “callousness.” An overwhelming majority of students at Simeon High are low-income, and one teacher tweeted they worked hard to fundraise for the trip.

A spokeswoman for EF Educational Tours said it cannot comment about specific tours and groups. But she noted EF Tours decided to extend its Peace of Mind program, usually reserved for cancellations 45 days in advance, to all tour groups in light of the outbreak. That would allow them to postpone their trips or join other trips scheduled for later in the year. The company’s web site says it doesn’t refund cancelled trips because it books airfare and hotels months, sometimes even years, in advance to offer students lower prices.

“We’re working on a solution with vendors,” a tweet from the official Chicago Public Schools account said. “No matter what, we’re going to make these students whole.”

As for field trips, the district told parents on Facebook that it would provide updates soon.

By Mila Koumpilova

🔗Seattle closes schools as Washington cases top 300

(1/3) Starting Thursday, March 12, @SeaPubSchools and the Seattle School Board will close Seattle Public Schools for a minimum of 14 days as the CDC currently guides. This necessary action is an effective way to disrupt widespread infection.
— Seattle Public Schools (@SeaPubSchools) March 11, 2020

March 11: Number of Illinois cases rises again

State leaders said Wednesday that six additional coronavirus cases were diagnosed in Illinois in the past 24 hours, bringing the statewide total to 25.

All but one of the new cases are in Cook County. Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced that the start of the state legislative session will be postponed until March 24; he also encouraged state residents to request vote-by-mail ballots for the March 17 Illinois primary by the 5 p.m. Thursday deadline.

“It’s on all of us to minimize the spread and keep Illinoisans healthy,” said Pritzker, who again voiced frustration with the limited number of tests provided by the federal government.

Alicia Tate-Nadeau, who leads the Illinois Emergency Management Agency, said schools and campuses across the state should be working on their plans for remote learning and canceling or postponing study abroad and other overseas travel.

Some Chicago parents are taking to Twitter to ask state elections officials to reconsider using schools as polling places for next week’s primary.

Parents have concerns about schools being used as polling places increasing #Covid19 exposure to kids. So many people enter schools to vote. Any thoughts of canceling classes 3/17 to lessen potential exposure?@ChiPubSchools @ChiPublicHealth @CDCgov @janicejackson @ILRaiseYourHand
— Mary Fahey Hughes (@FaheyHughes) March 11, 2020

by Mila Koumpilova

🔗Teachers union calls for remote learning plans, cleaning supplies

Jennifer Johnson, the Chicago Teachers Union’s chief of staff, spoke at a press event Mar. 11 with other labor leaders calling for a “common good platform” in responding to coronavirus.

Chicago Teachers Union leaders joined other labor groups at Chicago City Hall Wednesday morning to rally around what they dubbed “a common good platform” to protect workers and families during a coronavirus outbreak. Labor leaders called for the passage of statewide paid sick leave legislation.

The union called on Chicago Public Schools to suspend a school ratings policy that factors in student attendance, which leaders said discourages schools from sending sick students home promptly. The union also urged the district and others to advocate for state legislation on remote learning, one that would ensure student access to the internet and devices.

“In-person school is always best, but we have to have a backup plan to ensure students don’t fall behind,” said CTU Chief of Staff Jennifer Johnson.

Johnson and others also urged the district to step up efforts to ensure schools have adequate cleaning supplies. She said the coronavirus outbreak validates the union’s push to assign a nurse to every school, a staffing concession the group won in the last round of contract negotiations. And she reiterated demands to improve school cleanliness..

But Johnson also suggested this moment offers an opportunity for renewed collaboration with the district on a coronavirus response.

The union is canceling its upcoming delegate training “out of an abundance of caution,” Jones said.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth Lalasz, a registered nurse with the National Nurses United union, criticized the decision to call for self-quarantine only for students and employees of Vaughn Occupational School, where a classroom aide was diagnosed with the new coronavirus last week. She said the district, which heeded guidance from city health officials, should have asked siblings and parents to stay home as well.

“The entire family needs to be isolated to protect the community,” she said.

City health officials have said they believe the case at Vaughn is an “isolated incident” and that they are testing any students and staff with symptoms of illness.

Still, Lalasz acknowledged self-quarantine would have imposed hardship on some Vaughn families: “Without support, we can’t reasonably expect them to isolate themselves.”

By Mila Koumpilova

🔗Illinois needs more tests

Concerned about the coronavirus spread in Illinois, where confirmed cases numbered 19 as of midday Tuesday, Mayor Lori Lightfoot, in a joint appearance with Gov. J.B. Pritzker at the city’s Office of Emergency Management, announced that major St. Patrick’s Day parades for the weekend will be canceled.

Pritzker called on federal health officials to speed up their response.

“We need the federal government to rise to this occasion. As long as we are seeing an increase in cases and not enough tests, I will be, personally, on the phone with senior federal officials at the White House and elsewhere in the executive branch to continue to demand that we see a matching increase in tests,” he said.

Officials said they are paying close attention to veteran and senior living homes.

Meanwhile, a handful of other public school closures were announced. In DuPage County, Lombard School District 44 cancelled classes on Wednesday after a visitor to a volleyball game at Glenn Westlake Middle School on March 4 tested positive for COVID-19. The district said it will use an emergency day to clean and disinfect eight schools.

By Samantha Smylie

🔗Why planning for e-learning may be problematic in some districts

The conversation starts heating up about remote learning plans. By the start of this week, with case numbers climbing and a handful of school closing, the state school board prods districts to develop an e-learning plan “in preparation for the possibility of a school closure.”

And while some Illinois districts already have a head start because of cold weather closures, most are unprepared. Read more here.

🔗March 10

🔗What we know so far

Chicago has closed one school after a teacher’s aide there tested positive. More here.
Closing a school is a complex decision. Read more here about the impact on families at Vaughn Occupational.
Still, research shows school closures can slow the spread of illness. Read our research roundup here.
Coronavirus conversations are happening in the classroom. Here, one Indiana teacher explains how she’s addressing student fears.
School cleanliness is in the spotlight. Read here about how Chicago plans to deliver more cleaning supplies.
Parents have questions about who is susceptible. Here are 6 common questions and answers about Chicago’s response.
Federal officials have suggested districts should plan for remote learning. Here Chalkbeat explains why that’s a remote possibility for many urban districts.
There’s a renewed spotlight nationally on the role of school nurses. Read more here.
Other cities are grappling with tough questions, too, about when to close schools. Read the latest from our New York bureau here.

https://chalkbeat.org/posts/chicago/2020/03/17/home-school-is-the-new-reality-for-illinois-families-teachers-help-make-it-better/A new reality sets in.

Seven things parents should know about Chicago school closures and coronavirus

2020-03-16T22:46:37+00:00

A grim-faced Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and school chief Janice Jackson strode Monday through a windowless room in the basement of Chicago Public Schools’ downtown headquarters — the district’s command center for fielding families’ coronavirus concerns.

At desks set up at a social distance from each other — an all-caps message on a whiteboard instructed everyone not to move them — staffers took calls and answered emails.

Since the command center kicked into gear last week, staffers have logged more than 800 calls. Parents have wanted to know everything from how concerned they should be about their children’s possible coronavirus exposure to where they can take kids as a statewide closure begins Tuesday.

“We are really pushing that home is the best place to be,” Sergio Obregon of the district’s health and wellness department told the mayor.

Here are answers to seven of parents’ most pressing questions.

Can I drop off my children at school Tuesday?

No. District officials stressed Monday that the coronavirus-related closures are different from the 11-day Chicago teachers’ strike, when schools were open but minimally staffed. Schools will serve solely as curbside food distribution sites.

“It’s important to know this scenario is unprecedented,” Jackson said. “We are imploring families not to send their children to school.”

The Chicago Park District is offering expanded programming at 18 city parks for families in need of emergency child care, but participation at each site is limited to 50. Here’s the list.

How do I pick up school breakfast and lunch during the closure?

Any time between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. on weekdays starting March 17, families can grab a three-day supply of breakfast and lunch at any Chicago school, regardless of whether their child attends that school and whether they qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.

The district is creating pickup spots in front of schools for grab-and-go meals and encouraging families to pick up food once every three days.

“We are limiting social interaction as much as possible,” Jackson said.

Asked about some educators’ concerns that food delivery might help spread the virus, Lightfoot stressed Monday that coronavirus transmission appears to involve close contact with people displaying symptoms, not the casual interaction of picking up packaged food.

About 25 charter campuses also will operate food pickup sites. Here is the full list.

How will the district help students learn while schools are shuttered?

Chicago Public Schools educators have created take-home packets with learning resources for students, in both hard copy and digital formats. The district’s Office of Teaching and Learning also prepared activity packets for each grade that parents can download at cps.edu/enrichmentresources.

While some wealthier suburban districts are offering e-learning options for families, Chicago isn’t set up to offer that districtwide, Jackson has said. Not all students in the district have access to laptops and other devices.

Instead, the focus will be on enrichment and on encouraging families to do what they can at home.

Will my child’s work be graded?

No. The district is following state guidance not to grade assignments given during the closures, but district leaders encouraged parents to keep up with learning at home.

Could schools remain closed past March 31?

Lightfoot said city officials are closely monitoring guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agency is discouraging gatherings of 50 or more people through April, though it listed schools as a possible exception. Still, Lightfoot said Monday she could not rule out closures that extend beyond the March 31 date Gov. J.B. Pritzker has set.

“This is an incredibly fluid situation, which is an understatement,” Lightfoot said. “It’s hard for us to predict what will happen two days in advance.”

Some other cities have issued extended closures. New York City schools are closed until at least April 20. Boston schools are closed until April 27.

How do I talk to my children about the closures and coronavirus?

Teachers have navigated the sometimes difficult conversations about coronavirus in their classrooms during the past few weeks. What they have learned may prove instructive for housebound families. Read more here.

How do I get the district to answer my questions?

That’s where the district’s coronavirus command center comes in. You can call 773-553-KIDS from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays or email familyservices@cps.edu. The district’s goal is to return calls and answer emails the day they are received.

Frustrated Lincoln Park High School council calls for meeting with mayor, more transparency from Chicago Public Schools

2020-02-07T21:35:00+00:00

Members of Lincoln Park High School’s governing body say they want to meet with Mayor Lori Lightfoot and schools chief Janice Jackson in an effort to reinstate their campus administration. This comes nearly a week after the removal, and subsequent termination, of the school’s interim principal and assistant principal and the transfer of a dean.

The administrative changes, which Local School Council members said happened abruptly and without enough transparency from the district, happened during a multi-part investigation into sexual misconduct at the school.

A Chicago Public Schools spokesman said a meeting between council members and district leadership is set for Tuesday.

Speaking Friday afternoon to reporters, the mayor called the Lincoln Park cases “horrifying” and said that it was “absolutely necessary that (the district) act and act definitively.” She said she’s also willing to meet with council members.

“There’s a lot of things that were going on that involve student-on-student, that involve adult-on-student, and there’s serious questions about whether or not the administration that was there acted in a responsible way,” said Lightfoot. “Obviously we’ve got to have some sensitivities around the privacy interests of the students, and their parents have expressed that quite clearly. There are also ongoing investigations and I want to make sure that those are independent and done the right way, but I’m happy to sit down with them.”

Standing outside the school Friday morning, council members said they previously spoke with the district’s Office of Safety and Security, but were dissatisfied.

“We need to go to a higher level and understand why the decisions have been made to get us to this point,” said Eli Grant, a community representative on the 12-person council, which also includes parents, teachers, and a student.

Chicago Public Schools has said it had sufficient evidence to back the decisions to first suspend then terminate the administrators. But it can’t detail what it has learned without running afoul of student privacy laws and exposing teenage victims. “The actions we have taken are warranted and necessary based on the information we have at this time,” a spokesperson told Chalkbeat Thursday.

School councils, a fixture in Chicago school oversight for two decades, have the power to evaluate principals and a role in principal selection. They also review budgets. But their authority varies widely school-to-school, with some campuses plagued by chronic vacancies, and their legal and contract limitations mean they do not hire, fire, or evaluate teachers.

Recently, parents’ groups have called for further empowering the councils, and two Chicago-area legislators say they plan to propose legislation this year that would expand the role of the councils in school decision-making.

Grant said that the council was left out of the personnel decisions and that members are frustrated by the lack of transparency about the reasoning behind the decision, including what the fired administrators did or did not do, Grant said.

“At no point did CPS consult the (Local School Council) to remedy the misconduct,” Grant said. He said the council wants the district to reinstate Interim Principal John Thuet and assistant principal Michelle Brumfield, who’ve been terminated, and dean John Johnson, who has been transferred.

“These were individuals making a positive impact on the school community by listening and caring and doing things that resonated with students from all over Chicago,” he said. “Everyone felt welcomed for the first time in a while.”

Leaving school on Thursday, sophomore Ciara Carroll said the chaos reminded her of last year.

“No one cares, no one’s happy,” Carroll said.

Another sophomore, Isabella Scott, said that under Thuet and Brumfield’s leadership, this year the school has offered more activities and clubs, the dances are enjoyable, and members of the administration greeted students by name.

It has been a tumultuous week at Lincoln Park. On Wednesday, the district removed its stand-in administrator, Judith Gibbs, after a video of her appearing to squeeze a student’s face went viral.

Since Monday, students said they’ve seen a greater police presence at the school and fights.

“The last little piece of positivity we had, they’re gone,” Scott said. “[Brumfield] would go out of her way to make sure we felt positive, we felt good about going to school.”

In the midst of the uproar, Scott said the school has demonstrated unity.

“We’re so much better than this,” she said. “Once this is all over, our school’s true colors will shine. We really are a good school, and the people there are really good people, and so is the staff.”

Chicago Public Schools leaders said in a letter to parents Thursday that a pair of new administrators in charge, former principal trainer Jerryelyn Jones and former administrator Calvin Davis, are visiting every classroom to hear student concerns.

The district was sending additional people Friday to train staff in leading “talking circles” with students, and had set up a hotline and email for reaching the security office, the letter from Chief Schools Officer Bogdana Chkoumbova and Chief Security Officer Jadine Chou said. “We are committed to providing students with safe and healthy tools to express themselves during this difficult time.”

Justin Laurence and Maxwell Evans of Block Club Chicago contributed to this report.

Lincoln Park High allegations test Chicago’s new protocol for investigating sexual misconduct complaints

2020-02-06T22:56:13+00:00

Investigations spanning multiple school agencies. Accusations of sexual misconduct on an overnight boys basketball trip, and an alleged cover-up. The dismissal of a school’s top administrators and coaches. The abrupt suspension of a team’s basketball season ahead of a big game. Student walkouts.

And, in the middle of the investigations, the resignation of the city’s independent inspector general, Nicholas Schuler, amid rancor in his own office.

The recent revelations at Lincoln Park High School, a well-regarded International Baccalaureate school, have become a public test of Chicago Public Schools’ new protocol for investigating sexual misconduct complaints. The district’s response has set off a wave of parent and student protests and second-guessing.

“The mood is somber, the school is in chaos,” Mary Shaughnessy, whose son is a junior, said Thursday.

Amid the uproar, Chicago Public Schools says it had sufficient evidence to back the decisions to first suspend then terminate the school’s interim principal and one of its assistant principals. But it can’t detail what it has learned without running afoul of student privacy laws and exposing teenage victims.

“As we have told the school community, we are investigating multiple allegations of serious adult and student misconduct,” school district spokesman Michael Passman said. “Our top priority is ensuring all students have access to a safe and supportive learning environment, and the actions we have taken are warranted and necessary based on the information we have at this time.”

The allegations come at a critical moment for a campus that has experienced recent leadership changes and was seeking stability. They also test the Office of Student Protections, formed after a 2018 Chicago Tribune investigation revealed two decades of failure to protect students from sexual abuse.

The sudden resignation of the school board’s inspector general at the mayor’s request raises questions about who leads investigations, the independence of the public schools’ investigative office, and how effectively Chicago Public Schools can police itself.

Whether you’re just catching up or you’re curious about big-picture implications, here are six questions to consider as the investigation unfolds:

1. Why are parents and students so angry, and how will that impact the outcome?

The allegations at Lincoln Park High School surfaced in early January, not long after the boys basketball team returned from an unsanctioned overnight trip. The district’s Office of Student Protections received complaints that students engaged in sexual conduct on that trip, some of it possibly captured on social media, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. The district then removed the team’s popular coach.

More allegations followed, prompting the district to open additional investigations into behavior of students and adults. The district then terminated the interim principal, John Thuet, and an assistant principal, Michelle Brumfield, and removed two more coaches.

The list of issues under investigation now includes failure to properly report complaints, retaliation against witnesses, interference with the investigation by school leadership, and financial misconduct related to athletic program accounts.

The district opened another investigation this week into the conduct of a retired principal who was brought in to stabilize the school, after a video surfaced that appeared to show her grabbing a student in the hallway. The district has replaced that temporary principal.

Many parents and students demanding evidence have rallied to the defense of the ousted administrators and coaches. Students have protested this week, staging walkouts and sit-ins.

About 50 students stood outside the school’s front gates Thursday morning holding signs and chanting.

“All [CPS is] delivering to us is accusations, not evidence,” said Ben Shacter, a Lincoln Park sophomore. “If you’re willing to fire our two most beloved staff in the entire school, at least give us some evidence for why you did that.”

Shacter said students are unclear on what exactly Thuet and Brumfield are being accused of, and said that the pair had made a noticeable difference in the community.

“Brumfield every day would stand outside the door and hold the door and greet us: ‘Hey, queen. Hi, king. You look beautiful today,’” Shacter said. “It was really nice for the community. It helped build a really good chemistry that we didn’t really have with the previous administration.”

2. Who is in charge at the school?

On Wednesday, the school district appointed two administrators, former principal supervisor Jerryelyn Jones and a former principal, teacher, and central office executive, Calvin Davis, to temporarily run the 2,200-student school. Two assistant principals remain in place.

David Marren, a parent member of the Lincoln Park High School Local School Council, said that the council was “completely shut out” of the personnel decisions. On Monday, the council was interviewing candidates for permanent principal, he said, and was completely blindsided by the firings.

The council has noticed a “palpable difference” in the school since Thuet and Brumfield took over, he said, noting the effort they made to address security problems. “They were taking on issues that had been languishing untouched for years at the school,” Marren said. Since the removal, there have been reports of fighting at the school, he added.

3. Who is investigating what? And how will the inspector general’s resignation impact the investigation?

Two district offices, the Office of Student Protections and the Office of the Inspector General, are conducting five separate investigations involving the school.

A district spokesman said the inspector general generally investigates allegations of misconduct by district-affiliated adults, while the student protections office looks into allegations of student-on-student harm.

But some people — including Schuler — wonder whether the inspector general can truly be independent when the mayor appoints its chief.

In a letter released Wednesday about his resignation, which is effective at the end of the month, Schuler said, “the statute that gives life to the [Chicago Public Schools inspector general] is silent on the critical issue of how the [chief investigator] can be removed and for what grounds. This inadequacy in the governing legislation can be exploited by those who wish to corral an independent IG.”

He continued, “I know from long dealings with CPS that many people there have been displeased by the tenacity of my efforts and my willingness to speak frankly and publicly about our work. I am confident that Mayor [Lori] Lightfoot is firmly dedicated to independent IGs.”

4. Ultimately, who is calling the shots?

According to Passman, the Chicago Public Schools spokesperson, each investigative body will recommend a course of action, but it is up to schools chief Janice Jackson’s team to rule on any permanent personnel decisions.

Lightfoot will appoint a new inspector general to oversee the independent investigative office, which is tasked with rooting out fraud, waste, and mismanagement in the school district.

5. How much can the district do at this point and what can it say?

The allegations were first reported to the district on Jan. 2. According to a Chicago Public Schools timeline shared in a parent meeting Monday night at the school, by Jan. 7 investigators were following up and the district removed some adults from their positions. The district notified parents and families in a Jan. 9. Later that month the district received separate allegations involving the girls basketball team.

Protocols call for the district to remove adults immediately when it receives allegations of physical harm, but in this case, it did not remove administrators until the last week of January, per the timeline.

Investigators so far have presented information that shows adults engaged in “egregious and systemic policy violations,” including failure to follow mandatory sexual misconduct reporting procedures, according to the district, but it has not offered more details, citing an ongoing investigation and privacy concerns about the students involved.

Because the administrators at the school have interim status and serve on at-will contracts, the district could terminate them immediately. Interim principals don’t get the same protections that their permanent colleagues do. The district must hold hearings for the coaches, for whom there is a more formal course of action.

The district has refused to specify the nature and extent of the policy violations. But administrators have said that the new rules are hard to follow and even contradictory, according to Troy LaRaviere, a former principal who runs the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association.

“They [the district] have failed miserably on communicating a clear and coherent set of policies, procedures and protocols to principals,” LaRaviere said.

6. How might the case affect the school district’s efforts to rebuild public trust?
The Lincoln Park cases surface as Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson attempts to mend the district’s fractured relationship with parents and families. These efforts come in the wake of not just the student sexual abuse crisis but also widespread lapses in its special education program and lingering anger over mass school closings in 2013.

Led by its new school board, the district recently has organized public hearings on key issues like school ratings, teacher diversity, and school funding.

Jackson and school board members have said they will listen to the community in setting policy on those critical issues. But it’s unclear how the district will take parent and student reaction into account in responding to the crisis at Lincoln Park.

On Monday, district officials emphasized that they are following a protocol designed to keep students safe and that leaders could only share so much without jeopardizing the well-being of the teenage victims in the case. Officials spelled out in a PowerPoint presentation their goal — to “move forward as a safe and supportive community.”

Yana Kunichoff and Marie Fazio contributed reporting.

The real enrollment challenge in Chicago: what to do with all those empty school seats

2020-01-08T21:50:48+00:00

In Austin on Chicago’s West Side, a high school built for 1,000 students now houses just 58. Three-quarters of a mile away, another high school has just over 200 students in a campus for 2,000.

The problem isn’t just high schools, nor just in Austin. In Chicago, which is experiencing a slow population leak, the district has lost 54,100 public school children in the past decade. That has left 145 district-run schools less than half-full, according to new capacity data.

So far, leaders appear reluctant to spell out a plan for this large swath of schools that are severely underenrolled, even if campuses will soon cost the district even more to operate. A new five-year union contract introduces $1.5 billion in new costs, including the addition of a social worker and nurse at every school, and no clear plan for how to pay for them beyond Year One.

Running fewer schools would ease the financial pressure of that mandate, as a credit ratings agency signaled in a November report on the union deal. In the math of unevenly distributed enrollment, the contract’s new financial penalties for overcrowded classes have prompted administrators to take a closer look at the small number of schools that are bursting at the seams.

But neither Mayor Lori Lightfoot nor district leaders seems ready to take on the tough topic of underenrollment, even though propping up struggling schools drains others and deprives some students of rich course offerings and opportunities.

“It’s tricky politically, for sure,” said Marguerite Roza, a school finance expert and the director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University. “Every city has trouble with it. But it’s also true that cities that have too many under-enrolled schools are finding themselves in financial stress.”

Illinois law requires districts to have a plan for shrinking schools. Chicago’s plan lays out several interventions district leaders might use, from consolidations to redrafting attendance boundaries to leasing out excess classroom space to community groups, but it does not explain what is planned for individual schools. And a Dec. 1 deadline to propose closures for next year passed with the city picking just a single school to shutter, one that has no students enrolled at all.

District officials acknowledge the challenge but appear to be taking a scattershot approach to addressing it, brokering local conversations about underenrollment while also propping up hundreds of shrinking schools with stopgap funding.

“It’s no secret, I’ve talked about my concerns with the smaller schools in the district,” Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson told Chalkbeat in October. “When you don’t have enough students, you cannot create a robust program, or academic program, for the students in that school.”

All together, the dynamics suggest that the city isn’t confronting its most pressing education problem: keeping many lightly enrolled schools open is consuming scarce resources that might be more efficiently deployed in other ways.

“While I can’t predict what’s going to happen in the future, we are committed to looking at how we solve these problems holistically with the support of our parents and community partners,” the district’s second-in-command, LaTanya McDade, told Chalkbeat in November.

The argument for not managing the issue centrally

In the face of declining birth rates, a clampdown on immigration, and some population drain from urban centers, several districts around the country have rolled out systemic strategies for managing enrollment losses.

But even though Chicago is managed centrally, various reasons prompt the district to remain hands-off.

At the top of the list: residual anger and emotional scars from the 2013 mass closure that shuttered 50 schools in predominantly black neighborhoods, displaced thousands of students, and left some communities feeling shortchanged.

“Many families and teachers understood that maybe their schools needed to close, but they took major issue with the process by which it was done, which they found demeaning, disrespectful and dishonest,” said Chicago sociologist Eve L. Ewing, who studied the closures for her 2018 book “Ghosts in the Schoolyard.”

Since then, district officials have narrowed in on equity and how to direct more money to schools that get caught in a cycle of losing students and losing funding that goes with them, then being forced to make critical cuts to staff and programs that need to be in place to recruit more students.

But Chicago’s decision to direct $31 million to 219 schools with sagging enrollment last spring meant that, when budget numbers came in and two-thirds of schools saw boosts, some other schools with healthy enrollments saw declines. Nearly half of the schools — 49% — that lost money in the last budget cycle had stable or even increasing enrollment. The money, in essence, went from some healthy schools to those losing students.

This has happened in other cities, too, Roza said. “The choices become to take money away from schools that have more kids or leave the (dwindling) schools to kind of flounder.”

But those conversations are perhaps easier to manage than threatening closures, which tend to put community groups and parents on high alert. In Chicago, where the school board and schools CEO are appointed by the mayor, the buck ultimately stops with her — and she knows that the 2013 closures are being blamed for contributing to the ongoing exodus of working-class families from Chicago.

“It’s a very, very difficult story politically,” said Robin Lake, the director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education. “Chicago has had many rounds of closures and rarely has performance been at the center of the rationale of the closures, and I think that’s problematic. Other cities have said that, if we have to close schools, it will be because of performance — and not because of a certain percentage of seats aren’t filled. If there is a high-performing school operating under capacity, let’s figure out how it stays open.”

Financial pressure to manage enrollment is growing. Construction, maintenance, and new school construction have contributed to the second-highest school capital debt in the country. Plus, the new Chicago Teachers Union contract will add hundreds of thousands of dollars more annually to staffing costs per campus in nurses, social workers, and such extras as restorative justice counselors. Reducing the number of schools could pare down those costs.

Unbalanced enrollment exacts other costs. The teachers contract now forces the district to hire aides or add classes at overcrowded schools, which will affect some majority white schools on the North Side. The contract, however, offers no instructions on the many schools in predominantly black neighborhoods, such as Austin or South Shore, that sit half-empty.

Instead, city officials say they plan to let local communities engineer their own solutions.

“While enrollment continues to be a concern for schools and the district, we do not believe that nuanced enrollment concerns can be addressed with a blanket strategy, especially when demographic changes are rapidly shifting the enrollment landscape,” said Emily Bolton, a district spokeswoman. “Every neighborhood has different needs and the best way to support them is through an individualized approach, which is what the district is pursuing.”

Some communities are already making their own plans, pointing to local leaders’ expertise about local needs.

Groups in Austin are pushing a “quality-of-life” plan that designates one area high school as an International Baccalaureate center and proposes another vacant school be turned into a business incubator and workforce training center.

On the West Side, hospitals working under an economic development banner known as West Side United are seeking a grant for underenrolled elementary schools interested in housing a pilot community health clinic. The group is eyeing Austin, Garfield Park, North Lawndale, Pilsen, and Belmont-Cragin.

“The school we choose will be in a sweet spot: They’ll showcase the need for clinical services, such as mental health counseling, but they’ll also be in a position where they next step would be that they become a community hub for the neighborhood,” said Karen Aguirre, education program manager for West Side United.

But is that enough?

But school-by-school and community-driven changes are running into road bumps.

School consolidation, for example, faces an uphill path as the city teachers union criticizes a high-profile effort in Englewood, and educators struggle to find stability at another, on the city’s Near North Side.

In Englewood, a $85 million new STEM high school helped sell the consolidation idea to the community. But replicating this approach elsewhere would be a big ask of taxpayers in a district saddled with more than $8 billion of debt and a few campuses still left vacant from the 2013 closures.

Another strategy to closings or consolidation is leasing vacant space within schools to community groups or cross-purposing city programs, such as relocating a neighborhood gardening program to a vacant school greenhouse. That takes an infusion of new resources and incentives, said Daniel Anello, the CEO of Kids First Chicago, which drafts the district’s annual school inventory report, called the Annual Regional Analysis.

“There’s a lot of creative thinking that could really change the way we look at this challenge” Anello said. “But it’s only going to work if there is quarterbacking from City Hall. We can’t close our way out of this. It’s gone on so long.”

Strategic conversations about enrollment should include how to win students and families back who’ve decamped for the suburbs or private schools, said Lake, from the Center on Reinventing Public Education. “Oftentimes cities will be losing enrollment to surrounding districts, so a competitive strategy to win students back is something some places should consider and too few do.”

Chicago could even try a practice known as participatory budgeting, already used by some aldermen to give ward residents latitude to determine how funds are spent, said Ewing, the sociologist. “It would be possible to do something that felt like an extension of that — where the people most affected by school closures are really brought to the table to share ideas and feel like they have an opportunity to understand up front the logic of whatever decision is made.

“Unfortunately, there is so much pain around this issue, and a justified deficit of trust. So that makes a conversation like that much harder.”

Lessons for the city

One thing is clear: School closures and consolidations are tough conversations everywhere. In Oakland, California, school district leaders drew up a three-year blueprint for closings and consolidations, but community protests have escalated over the plan. In Austin, Texas, administrators keep revising a multiyear strategy of school closings and mergers — in part because the district’s new equity officer has said the planning won’t increase equity in the city.

Leaders in both cities have been consistent about the need to make tough choices. Faced with the specter of rising debt and empty seats, Austin Superintendent Paul Cruz put it bluntly in a letter earlier this fall: “No change at all is not an option.”

Researchers from the Pew Center studied the phenomena of school closings in shrinking cities in America, and found that some districts made the decisions less politically fraught: Having a plan for what to do with buildings helped. Hiring outside experts to guide the process tended to make it easier as long as those people were perceived as fair. So did establishing clear criteria for which campuses to close.

“Communicating that no neighborhood is being singled out or targeted is important, and that closings are part of an overall plan for the district’s future,” said Larry Eichtel, who studied the school closings as part of the Philadelphia Research Initiative at The Pew Charitable Trusts.

Eichtel said another critical takeaway was the importance of persuading the public early that downsizing is needed. That way, when you get to actual naming of schools, “it’s not such a shock.”

Following these prescriptions might have yielded a better outcome for Chicago’s most recent closures.

A 2018 study from the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research revealed that four years after the mass school closures, affected Chicago students posted lower math scores. (There were no clear effects on suspension or on attendance rates.)

Elaine Allensworth, the consortium’s director, says that the sheer volume and speed of the 2013 closings might help explain some of Chicago’s negative outcomes, where other cities have seen different results.

“If there had been more intentionality about the merging of school communities, and if school decisions had more community input so that people felt like they had more self-determination and input about the strengths and problems and limitations of their underenrolled schools, I wonder how things might have been different?” she said.

Complicating the argument is that research points to little in the way of substantial cost savings when districts close schools, at least in the short term. Across cities, “the money saved, at least in the short run, has been small,” said Eichtel of the Pew Charitable Trusts. “You tend to see more savings when closings are combined with large-scale layoffs.”

In Chicago, the district has yet to show cost savings from the 2013 closings, even though finances were among the justifications used by former Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

But with new numbers showing more schools dramatically hollowing out, ongoing financial pressures, and some schools at the bottom of capacity scale registering below-average graduation rates and achievement levels, there’s a growing recognition that something must be done.

“The fact that we have high schools with 10% enrollment is a reality. How we got there — we can argue about that,” said Sarah Rothschild, a teachers union official. “But how we move forward — we can do that together. I don’t think we’re in an unsolvable situation.”

Philissa Cramer contributed reporting.

Chicago school board greenlights strike makeup days, but principals raise concerns

2019-11-21T03:25:00+00:00

Chicago’s Board of Education voted Wednesday to add five days to the school calendar to partly make up for time lost during the 11-day teachers strike. The days include the day before Thanksgiving and two days each at the end of winter break and the end of the school year.

But there’s no decision yet on whether schools will be penalized if students don’t show up, which has some principals worried.

The makeup days, which allow teachers to recoup nearly half of their pay lost during the strike and allow students to gain lost classroom time, are Nov. 27, Jan. 2 and 3, and June 17 and 18.

In a survey released Wednesday, three-quarters of principals queried by the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association from Nov. 15 to Nov. 18 said their schools could be dinged in their attendance, which could drop their school’s quality rating by one level.

Average daily attendance counts for 20% of an elementary school’s quality rating and 10% of a high school’s rating, under the school district’s formula. The district wants to change the formula next school year.

Principals of schools with 75% low-income students or more were more likely to believe their individual school rating would fall than principals with a third or fewer low-income students. But 86% of principals believed that ratings would be impacted systemwide. Slightly more than 400 principals responded to the survey, according to the association.

Troy LaRaviere, an outspoken former principal who runs the association, told the school board Wednesday that some principals also expressed concern that they weren’t consulted before the district announced makeup days on social media.

“Principals felt taken for granted because of the district’s failure to consult principals in this decision,” he said.

He said several principals suggested that makeup days be placed at the end of the school year and be made non-attendance days for students, so that educators could focus on professional development and make plans for the start of the next school year.

Schools chief Janice Jackson responded that wasn’t an option, because in the return-to-work agreement with the union, CTU leaders specified that the missed days should be instructional days. “That was not an option that was presented to us.”

Earlier in the meeting, the system’s No. 2 administrator, LaTanya McDade, said that the district labored over deciding which five days to choose out of 13 that were presented as options: “There was no ideal solution and nothing that would work for everyone,” she said.

One scenario, extending the school year later in June for students, was unpopular with parents and would give the district little wiggle room to make up any days for inclement weather, she said. Chicago had to tack on days this past school year after a polar vortex plunged temperatures into negative digits.

“We heard overwhelmingly from parents that extending school year into late June was a ‘poor option,’” McDade said.

Principals also said in the survey that they had concerns about staffing makeup days.

McDade told the board it is premature to make decisions about attendance and how it would impact ratings. “We are committed to monitoring the situation closely and listening to feedback,” she said, adding that inclement weather days, which are impossible to predict, will also factor in.

Attendance is a controversial measure in the district’s school ratings policy, since it’s something that schools have little control over. The district is weighing changes that would lessen the impact of attendance on a rating. Those proposals are open for public review here.

To read more about ratings, click here.

State statute requires a school district to have 180 days, a total that includes teacher institute days and parent-teacher conferences, according to a spokeswoman for the Illinois State Board of Education. Before the strike, Chicago had eight days above that total; however, the work stoppage reduced CPS’ calendar by 11 days. So Chicago must make up a difference of at least three days to be in compliance.

The state does not dictate when those days should be. The only exceptions are state-mandated holidays.

Live updates from Day 11 of the Chicago teachers strike: One final back-and-forth

2019-10-31T22:00:00+00:00

Remember when union leaders predicted a “short-term” strike?

Some 300,000 Chicago students remained out of school, and their families continued to scramble, as Chicago’s teachers strike entered Day 11 Thursday. The territory was new: The union and city had arrived a deal, but the strike continued over a conflict about how teachers could make up missed days and recoup lost pay.

But things changed midday. Around 1:30 p.m., the city and teachers union announced a deal to end the strike. Classes will resume Friday and teachers and students will make up five of the missed days.

5 p.m. That’s a wrap

We’ll let American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten have the last word, but only because the national union just sent out a statement from her. “We have helped make Chicago’s public schools safe, welcoming sanctuaries of learning, and we have shown an entire nation that when we fight together, we win,” said Weingarten, who visited teachers in Chicago on the picket line multiple times.

4:40 p.m. Flying the W (and L)

Was the Chicago Teachers Union’s strike a success? It’s not that simple, but we ran down what happened to the five issues the union said had been the biggest sticking points. There are wins and losses to go around.

3 p.m. Happy Halloween

A one-day week after two weeks off and a late night filled with candy — should be a smooth landing in schools Friday.

The strike is OVER! And we have a massive snow storm for Halloween 🎃! Extremely proud of all the #CTUSEIUstrike Teachers/ staff/ parents/ allies! Kids are going to be all sugared tomorrow! pic.twitter.com/N2qX1zJo5B
— Naomi S. #Biden2020 #KhiveforBiden (@NomiBlockS) October 31, 2019

2:21 p.m. A teacher’s tweet

Room 102, I can’t wait to see you tomorrow!! 🤩
— Lauren Peretz (@MsPeretz) October 31, 2019

1:36 p.m. Must’ve felt good to hit “send”

Chicago Public Schools has been tweeting and sending a daily “Update on classes” message to families since the strike began. Here’s today’s:

Welcome back, everyone! pic.twitter.com/6BHr6j5BsC
— ChicagoPublicSchools (@ChiPubSchools) October 31, 2019

1:30 p.m. IT’S OVER

Classes will resume Friday after city and union officials announced — separately — that they had reached a compromise about makeup days. Five school days will be made up, with the specifics yet to be determined. Our developing story is here.

11:45 a.m. Taking teachers’ temperature (they’re cold)

Chicago Teachers Union members rallied outside City Hall on the 11th day of their strike, the morning after the union endorsed a conditional agreement.

The crowds were smaller than they were earlier in the week, but a thrumming drumbeat and renewed indignation over the mayor’s stance on makeup days kept teachers marching around City Hall in bitter, windy, snowy conditions Thursday morning.

“I think we’re all really mad, because we’re still here,” said Bill Chlumsky, a special education teacher at Talman Elementary School in Gage Park. “We’ve agreed to end this strike, and all we want is for the mayor to give our kids back the days they’ve missed.”

With their health insurance expected to be suspended on Friday and an increasing weariness from the demands of being on strike, teachers said they are ready to head back to the classroom but remain determined to hold out on a deal until Mayor Lori Lightfoot agrees to add the missed school days — 11 and counting — back into the school year.

“It’s tough, it’s demoralizing, and it’s harder to come out every day,” Chlumsky said. “But if this is what we have to do to get our kids what they deserve, then that’s what we have to do.”

Chlumsky and fellow Talman teachers looked over the city’s offer while on the picket line Wednesday, and while Chlumsky said he still isn’t sure how he will vote when the contract goes out to the full membership, he said he thinks it will “probably” be accepted.

But, he said, “I think it’s really close down the middle.”

Art teacher Vanessa Viruet wore the Halloween costume she had planned to share with students to the Chicago Teachers Union rally on the 11th day of Chicago’s teacher strike.

Art teacher Vanessa Viruet showed up to the rally dressed in the Halloween costume she had planned to share with her students at Spry Elementary Community School in Little Village. Her lime-green wig, polka-dot skirt, and bedazzled clown makeup were a bright spot among a sea of winter coats and umbrellas meant to guard against the falling snow.

“We’re tired and we’re cold, and we want to be back inside with our students first and foremost,” Viruet said. “We wouldn’t be out here if we didn’t love our children.”

Viruet had planned to go to the doctor this morning to squeeze in an important appointment the day before she is set to lose her health insurance, but that was before news broke late Wednesday night that teachers would return to the picket lines on Halloween.

“I hope we all don’t get sick out here, because that would be something else,” she noted wryly.

If Lightfoot concedes on the makeup day issue, Viruet said she and her fellow teachers are ready to get back to the classroom, even if the contract on the table doesn’t include everything they were hoping for.

“It’s the makeup days [we’re waiting for],” she said. “Everything else, I think we’re willing to give her the benefit of the doubt she’ll hold up her end of the deal.”

11:25 a.m. CTU at City Hall

Union President Jesse Sharkey has entered the mayor’s office at City Hall. Chicago Public Schools Chief Operating Officer Arne Rivera is also there, according to WBEZ’s Sarah Karp. Rivera has been a core member of the district’s negotiating team.

11 a.m. More makeup context

How to handle makeup days is usually negotiated as part of strike settlement deals, a National Council on Teacher Quality analyst told us this week. But that doesn’t mean the agreements always include makeup time.

The Chicago Teachers Union just shared its analysis of the last 35 years of teachers strikes in Illinois. Of 915 days lost to 107 strikes, it found, 75% were made up. That’s according to Chris Geovanis, a union spokesperson, who added, “We are truly in uncharted legal territory.”

In the two big-city strikes last school year, no makeup days were scheduled and no back pay was offered. Los Angeles students and teachers lost six days to the strike, while Denver’s strike lasted for thee days. Denver did offer teachers the opportunity to earn a day’s pay by attending a rescheduled weekend training session.

10 a.m. The Internet has ideas

The public has ideas for makeup days. Here are some of the many conversations we’ve seen on social media about the prospect.

9:30 a.m. Open to talking, but who’s calling whom?

In an update to press on Thursday morning, Mayor Lori Lightfoot says she’s willing to negotiate on the issue of makeup days for teachers that were missed during the strike — but she’s “not willing to do a ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ unilateral demand.”

Options on the table include extending the school year, cutting short winter or spring break, or using other professional development days. Asked what she might consider, Lightfoot hedges: “We’re not going to negotiate in the media.”

Schools chief Janice Jackson steps up and says the district is reluctant to cut short breaks and disrupt family plans.

As for next steps, CTU President Jesse Sharkey said Wednesday night he was waiting on a call from the mayor. But Lightfoot says the “the ball is in [the union’s] court.”

“I’m here all day. If they’d like to have a conversation, they know where to find me.”

9:15 a.m. Frustrated families

Parents who are facing an 11th day with children out of school are expressing a mix of emotions, from confusion, to consternation, to downright anger. “I deeply appreciate the teachers,” says Alicia Blais, a South Side parent of a second grader and a preschooler. “But I don’t want CTU to drag out contract negotiations.” She said she’s also worried that her children, who have many years of schooling to go, will have to endure future strikes if peace isn’t reached.

Other reactions we’re seeing on social media in response to our question this morning: How are you feeling?

From the parent view, I'm pretty annoyed with both sides (& CTU had to work to get on par with the Mayor and CPS in earning my ire; I was with them through most of this, as I was in 2016 and 2012).
— Scott Walter (@slwalter123) October 31, 2019

Drained and tired of watching my special needs child come unravelled from lack of school structure. Frustrated with how the mayor has handled this.
— Blanche (@WestofPulaski) October 31, 2019

What happened Wednesday

It was an anxiety-producing 24 hours as teachers and Chicago Public Schools leadership worked toward a deal.

Here’s what happened last night.
Here’s why makeup days are an issue.
Here’s the tentative agreement teachers voted for. Even once the strike ends, the union’s constitution will require the broader membership to vote on the document.d
Here’s a detailed accounting of the topsy-turvy last 24 hours.

Also Wednesday: The 7,500 bus aides, special education assistants, and other school support staff who are members of Service Employees International Union Local 73 voted in favor of a deal with the city. Members remain on strike out of solidarity to teachers, but leadership has said they will not be considered “scabs” if they return to work.

What happens next? Teachers are planning at 10 a.m. rally at City Hall. There’s nothing yet on Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s official schedule. We’ll track developments here.

Parents, students, teachers: How are you feeling about the latest developments? Write us at chicago.tips@chalkbeat.org or send us a message on Twitter or Facebook.

Chicago and union reach tentative pact — but teachers say an end to strike hinges on making up days

2019-10-31T03:30:00+00:00

After a tense 24-hour stalemate that saw hopes raised and dashed of a possible deal, delegates for the Chicago Teachers Union voted 364 to 242 to approve a tentative contract Wednesday night. But that vote comes with a caveat: Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot must agree to let the members make up their missed days and earn their pay, teachers say.

In the meantime, the teachers say their strike will continue, entering an 11th day Thursday. Chicago Public Schools has canceled classes for its 300,000 students in district-run schools.

Speaking at City Hall Wednesday after the union’s House of Delegates vote, Lightfoot said she was “gravely disappointed” in the turn of events and said she did not plan to compensate teachers for days they were on strike.

“At some point, the negotiations have to end,” Lightfoot said. “(Union President) Jesse Sharkey came into my office, laid out six issues, and told me in response to my skepticism that they would not move the goalposts. He gave me his word.”

“At some point,” she said, “the negotiations have to end.”

Bargaining has waxed and waned for two weeks, and leaders of both sides have alternately appeared cautiously optimistic, non-committal and patently frustrated at what they see as political posturing at the bargaining table and in public.

Tuesday night, talks appeared stuck on teacher prep time and a host of ancillary issues that had received little attention, like teacher evaluations and banking sick time.

A Tuesday night House of Delegates meeting to “take the temperature” of teachers, according to leaders, raised hopes that a deal was near, but ended with teachers saying they’d be on picket lines on Wednesday.

But in 24 hours, the mood changed again. The governing body was called to convene again Wednesday night. The 41-page tentative agreement members weighed lays out how the city would invest money in a committee to help reduce overcrowded classes and in hundreds of new social workers, nurses, and special education managers — some $70 million in additional staffing, all told. It also better guards counselors, special education classroom assistants, and teachers assistants from being called on to serve as de-facto substitutes, a chronic complaint on the picket lines.

But the document, which also has provisions containing minutia about diapering and makeup of committees, lacked some of the union’s top priorities such as additional prep time for most elementary teachers.

Still, the majority of delates voted in favor of the agreement.

Stephanie Bradley, a social studies teacher at Kelley High School on Chicago’s South Side, said she cast one of the “yes” votes to end the strike. “We got a lot of wins,” she said, standing outside union headquarters after the vote. “It’s not perfect — but, overall, I think it’s something we can take back to our members that is solid. There’s never been anything guaranteed about class size, for example, and now there is some mechanism to enforce class size. Would I like to be better? Absolutely. But it’s a great start.”

Sharkey called the tentative agreement “a contract we can believe in” and listed several gains.

But he said one issue was preventing a return to work: making up lost days.

“We don’t understand why the mayor can’t simply call and say, We’ll give you an agreement to make up instructional time,” said Sharkey, who was flanked by union leaders and American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten. “If the mayor calls and says we have an agreement on that, we’ll be back at work tomorrow. If she does not call, we’re continuing to be on strike.”

Minutes later, Chicago Public Schools posted a notice on social media that it was canceling classes for an 11th day.

Teachers are planning a 10 a.m. rally on Thursday at City Hall. Lightfoot said her team would be ready to return to the bargaining table.

Cassie Walker Burke contributed to this report.

Live updates from Day 8 of the Chicago teachers strike: Both sides stuck as classes are canceled for ninth day

2019-10-29T01:15:00+00:00

Chicago entered the eighth day of a teachers strike in a precarious stalemate between the two sides, as parents continued to fork out money for strike camps and weigh sending children to minimally staffed schools.

Things could get hectic downtown, but not directly because of teachers. Students planned a strike-related march to start at 9:30 a.m. on South State Street and head north to City Hall. President Donald Trump also is in town on unrelated business, speaking to the International Association of Chiefs of Police at McCormick Place and then hosting a roundtable at his Michigan Avenue hotel. Several activist groups are planning Trump-related rallies.

The union told teachers that joining in would qualify as “productive,” even though the action is not on the list of official events for the group Monday.

Our team will be covering the latest today in negotiations, rallies, and more. Follow Yana Kunichoff (@yanazure) and Cassie Walker Burke (@cassiechicago) for the latest.

7:15 p.m. Big news?

The union is bringing its rank-and-file bargaining team into negotiations, saying it believes there is an additional $100 million in the city’s budget that could be used to meet its contract demands.

The full team’s arrival “signals that we intend to be here until we get [a tentative agreement],” said the union’s second in command, Stacy Davis Gates.

Earlier in the day, the Chicago Sun-Times published a story saying the mayor is taking $60 million from the school district. That’s reportedly to cover some of the city’s pension obligations for teaching assistants, clerks and other support staff. That money, Davis Gates said, could be used to close a contract deal.

The school district’s top lawyer has also joined the bargaining team for the first time, according to union officials.

7:06 p.m. An intense message

School district officials have been pretty even-handed in their daily updates to families — until now. Instead of just telling parents where they can send their children and what services schools will offer, tonight’s email comes directly from CEO Janice Jackson and makes the case that the teachers union is refusing to accept a compelling offer, at the expense of students.

“Today is the ninth time you have received a message from me that classes and after school programming are, again, not in session tomorrow,” Jackson writes. “This is the third week that students are not in school, and it’s unacceptable.”

6:44 p.m. The pressure’s on

Extended strikes introduce some complicated dynamics. When people at the bargaining table make concessions early on in contract talks, or even during strikes, it can be easy to paint that decision as peace-making. When the concessions come after days of apparent stalemate, they can look a lot like caving.

That means the pressure is on for the Chicago Teachers Union, which by all accounts has gotten lots of what it came to the table asking for — though absolutely not all of it.

Here’s one thread we just saw making this point:

The strike has already cost a lot. Lost days in school, lost opportunities for student athletes, lost productivity for parents, lost time for seniors applying to colleges. @CTULocal1 will have to prove that it was worth it. @SSKedreporter @HannahMLeone @NaderDIssa
— Sujatha Shenoy (@sujatha_shenoy) October 28, 2019

6 p.m. Update from the bargaining table

As the eighth day of the Chicago teachers strike wound down, city officials said negotiations remain stalled over prep time and the cost of the contract.

“We have a proposal on the table, of nearly half a million dollars, that addresses all of the key issues,” the district’s Chief Education Officer LaTanya McDade said. That includes $70 million in staffing and $25 million to reduce class sizes.

“We put that in the contract in writing,” McDade said, nodding to the union’s demand that staffing and class size be included in the contract, which the city initially rebuffed before conceding.

The city estimates that its offer to the teachers union would cost nearly $500 million more by the end of a proposed five-year contract than it is currently spending. It says the union’s remaining demands would cost another $100 million a year — and the city can’t afford that.

“We are a district that is still borrowing $1 billion dollars just to keep the lights on,” McDade said, addressing reporters Monday outside of Malcolm X College, where negotiations are expected to continue into the evening.

Prep time remains a sticking point. The union wants elementary teachers to get an extra 30 minutes of prep time, which they lost when the city lengthened the school day. But the city says there is no way to increase that without students losing instructional time. One option, suggested by the union, could be for teachers to arrive to school 30 minutes early, but that would add costs to contract demands the city says are already too high.

Still, even as negotiations remain stuck over the last few days, McDade said the city is committed to getting students back in school as soon as possible. “We are working really hard to get our students back into the classroom,” she said.

4:30 p.m. Yeah, about tomorrow

Classes are canceled again Tuesday, Chicago Public Schools just announced on its website. That makes nine straight school days without classes for more than 300,000 Chicago students.

Earlier this afternoon, the Chicago Teachers Union also announced plans for Tuesday.

TUESDAY: If we are on strike tomorrow, here is the plan. We have 3 marches going at 8am. No school pickets tomorrow. Here are our 3 marching mtg spots by school location. The marches will be merging together to march to on one location. #CTUSEIUstrike pic.twitter.com/z10kPKrZ1u
— Sarah4Justice (@Sarah4Justice) October 28, 2019

3 p.m. More about the SEIU 73 deal

The union representing school support staff like bus aides and custodians has reached a tentative agreement with the city, but said Monday that its members would stay on picket lines until the teachers union has a deal.

In a press conference on Monday, SEIU Local 73 president Dian Palmer said the contract will make real changes for members, but declined to give additional details. The union’s 7,500 members are voting on the agreement, which would run through 2023, on Monday and Tuesday. (The union’s last contract expired a year ago, and the new contract runs for five years.)

The agreement includes a minimum 16% raise over five years for all employees, and no changes to the health insurance plan for the length of the contract.

According to a rank-and-file member, special education classroom aides have also won job protections that would keep them from being pulled to work as substitutes or other school duties. Read more here.

In a statement, Mayor Lori Lightfoot applauded the deal. “I am very pleased we were able to work together to agree on a strong, fair deal that will provide substantial raises and real improvements to working environments, and I commend negotiators on both sides for their tireless effort,” she said.

2:45 p.m. “We’re willing to do whatever it takes”

Or maybe there’s a new union message? After Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson spoke with members of the City Council’s Black Caucus about the city budget today, she rejected a union claim that she had walked away from contract talks, according to a Chicago Tribune reporter. In response, according to the reporter, the union’s second-in-command made a bold proclamation about the stakes of today’s negotiations.

.@CTULocal1 VP @stacydavisgates declined to respond to Jackson's "that's a lie!" remark.

“Look, it’s difficult right now in negotiations. Emotions are high. There’s a lot of compressed intensity. We need a deal tonight. We’re willing to do whatever it takes.” https://t.co/35E7flhT2S
— Gregory Pratt (@royalpratt) October 28, 2019

2:34 p.m. A new union refrain

For the first week of the strike, the Chicago Teachers Union’s main message was that Mayor Lori Lightfoot needed to put her promises in writing. Now that she has done that, in the city’s formal contract offer, the union has shifted to emphasizing the spending gap that it says separates its vision for the school system and what Lightfoot is prepared to spend. (The city says the gap is larger.)

We first heard the message overnight on Saturday and since then we’ve gotten several press releases and seen dozens of social posts sounding the same note. And after city officials said today that the gap is larger, union chief Jesse Sharkey just sent out a statement recapping the idea. Here it is, in its totality: “Thirty eight million dollars — one half of one percent of CPS’ annual budget — is what is preventing the CTU and CPS from landing a tentative agreement. $38 million.”

1:45 p.m. Pension tensions

City Hall reporter Fran Spielman has some important new details about Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s budget — including that she is asking Chicago Public Schools to spending $60 million on pensions for retired teachers, a cost that has the city has always borne from its budget in the past. This development would seem to take the school district further from being able to meet the teachers union’s demands at a moment when every dollar on the table appears to count. The city is disputing Spielman’s account but did not offer specifics.

1 p.m. Seniors in a crunch

Chicago Public Schools seniors facing early decision deadlines this week are feeling the crunch of going without counselors, teachers, and clerks who can help with transcripts and recommendations — and colleges are responding.

A spokesperson for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign said that, while not moving its early decision application deadline of Friday, it is offering Chicago students flexibility with one part — application fee waivers, the only portion of the admissions application that needs to be completed with a school staffer’s help. The university posted an entire FAQ for anxious Chicago students titled “Applying to Illinois during the CPS strike? Here’s what you need to know.”

Northwestern University is encouraging students who want to apply early to submit their online application by the Nov. 1 deadline, then work with teachers and school staffers to send additional materials once schools have reopened, a spokesperson said.

And a spokesperson from the University of Illinois at Chicago said its campus has not made deadline adjustments yet, but is “monitoring the situation.”

11:30 a.m. Tell us what you’re thinking

Cassie just posted a thread about her family’s experience with the strike at this point and asked for reactions.

THREAD / I'm a @ChiPubSchools parent. My big kid is 8. (Others are younger/not in CPS). I've relied on an ad-hoc arrangement of grandparents, neighbors, taking him to work with me, sending him to work w/ my husband, watching way too much TV while I cover #CTUstrike

I'm lucky
— Cassie Walker Burke (@cassiechicago) October 28, 2019

Here’s one parent response that she’s already gotten. Respond on Twitter or email us with your own take.

Please write more about the spillover effects from the strike. I spoke to at least 10 CPS parents yesterday who no longer support the strike. The strike now into Day 8 is unconscionable. My husband leaves work 2 hours early, I get in 1 hr late bc of the strike. @CTULocal1
— AndricT (@TAndric81) October 28, 2019

11 a.m. “It’s gone on too long”

The governor has weighed in. Speaking on WBEZ this morning, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said something that many are beginning to think: “It’s gone on too long.”

10 a.m. Signs of frustration

There was lots of sniping about the strike last week on social media, but mostly between city and union allies who were extending the rhetoric unspooled in public statements and press briefings. Increasingly, though, parents are weighing in — often anonymously — to argue for a compromise that lets schools reopen. Here’s one representative tweet from a new account, @StopCPSStrike, that launched late last week:

To mayor & CTU: The taking umbrage is getting old. Someone made a snarky comment? Ignore it & keep negotiating. “Water off a duck’s back,” people, stay focused. #StopTheCPSStrike @FuscoChris @EricZorn @MarkBrownCST @ad_quig @AmandaVinicky #CPS https://t.co/MzP5pH5P5t
— CPS Parent Voice (@CPSParentVoice) October 27, 2019

6:30 a.m. Same drill

Monday dawned with teachers walking picket lines at 6:30 a.m. Lengthy telephone town halls over the weekend aimed to keep them focused on the mission, even as teachers expressed concern over missing pay and possibly losing out on health insurance if the strike extends to Nov. 1.

While members of SEIU73 landed a tentative deal late Sunday, the union said it planned to continue standing on picket lines in solidarity with teachers, which mean schools will go on being minimally staffed.

Over the weekend

Marathon weekend bargaining sessions produced tense rhetoric but no resolution. Here’s what you need to know:

Schools chief Janice Jackson visited bargaining on Sunday.
The teachers union, which had signaled earlier that it would be willing to compromise on some of its core issues if it got relief in class sizes and commitments to new staffing, stuck a more obstinate tone late Sunday, hinting that it may be holding out on a broader list of issues, such as prep time and contract length.
In weekend calls with members, union leaders underscored the demand for an additional 30 minutes of prep time daily in elementary schools. The school district contends that it would have to potentially start schools earlier to accommodate that demand, cutting in on instructional time.
Chance the Rapper gave the teachers’ effort national airtime on Saturday Night Live.
One bright spot in the weekend: Service Employees International Union Local 73 struck a tentative deal Sunday night. Read more here.
The teachers union and Chicago Public Schools each offered different estimates of how much their proposals would cost the city. Late Sunday, Chicago Public Schools offered this breakdown of its offer.

Earlier tonight, CTU rejected a nearly half-billion dollar offer. In addition to double-digit raises for all staff, our offer included another 110M to provide a nurse and social worker for every school, and prioritized support for high-need schools. #PutItInWriting pic.twitter.com/aIhWhqTPGq
— ChicagoPublicSchools (@ChiPubSchools) October 28, 2019

Saturday talks between Chicago and its teachers union end with no deal — and a $38 million divide

2019-10-27T05:05:00+00:00

As Chance the Rapper was wearing a red Chicago Teachers Union sweatshirt on “Saturday Night Live,” union officials were still hunkered down with city negotiators.

When both sides emerged later, city and union officials said they had made progress but still remained far from reaching a deal to end the city’s seven-day teacher strike.

“We’re not close to where we need to be on the big issues,” said Deputy Mayor Sybil Madison. “We will return tomorrow and work diligently to close the divide.”

Another late night with no deal dims the prospect of classes resuming on Monday. If teachers do not return to work then, the current strike will become the longest in more than three decades.

There is still a $38 million gap between what the city has committed to spending and what the union is demanding, union President Jesse Sharkey said early Sunday morning.

“We have made what we believe is a reasonable proposal that would bridge the final gap and get a contract done,” Sharkey said. He added that the spending would account for three of the union’s core issues: class size relief, support staffing, and pay raises for paraprofessionals as well as veteran teachers. “We’re still waiting for a response from them.”

Sharkey said a fourth major issue, teacher prep time, remains a sticking point. He also suggested that the union could give in on teachers’ demand for a three-year contract if the city meets its other demands. The city has said it is committed to a five-year contract length.

There were multiple indications Saturday that the city and union are not necessarily planning on an immediate resolution. Union leaders said there were no changes in the bargaining team sent by the school district, meaning that neither CEO Janice Jackson nor Mayor Lori Lightfoot attended Saturday’s talks. Lightfoot has said she will participate in bargaining when she can “add value.”

And the union had not scheduled a meeting of its 800-member House of Delegates, which must vote to end the strike and sending teachers back to their classrooms. It would be difficult — but in theory possible — for a meeting to be held Sunday if a deal is reached early in the day.

Going into the weekend, both sides described Saturday as a pivotal day for negotiations.

In updates Friday, city and union officials said negotiators had settled many technical items, leaving weekend talks to focus on five core issues of class size, staffing, teacher prep time, contract length, and pay.

But substantial differences remained at the start of the day. A bargaining table document obtained by the Sun-Times on Friday pointed to a $71 million gap between what the city so far had agreed to spend and what the teachers union wants. Talks Saturday closed more than half of that distance but still left a substantial divide.

Plus, Sharkey detailed several unresolved issues beyond those five concerns in a conversation with union members late Friday night. Those included whether teachers who retire should receive payments for unused sick days, and when teacher evaluations should take place.

Teachers continued to make their case publicly on Saturday. Parents and teachers of students with disabilities met with Board of Education President Miguel del Valle and asked him to sign a statement pledging his support. The statement, which he signed, called for dedicated case managers and reasonable workloads for teachers and case managers.

The meeting came a day after parents and educators reported continuing concerns with special education at a state legislative committee hearing about state and local efforts to address longstanding problems.

“We can’t deny we’ve been deficient as a system about it. We have to do something about it, and we have to do it now,” del Valle told the group Saturday.

And striking teachers got a boost from Chance the Rapper during his late-night appearance hosting “Saturday Night Live.” During his last appearance on the late-night show, he donated $1 million to Chicago schools. On Saturday, he quipped, “It completely fixed everything,” before growing more serious.

“To the teachers in Chicago, I know you guys are on strike right now, I fully support you,” he said. “I just wish that when I was in school, my teachers had gone on a strike.”

The contract talks continue as teachers at one Chicago charter school ended their strike. Late Friday, educators at Passages Charter School in Edgewater announced they’d reached a contract deal with their manager, ending a four-day strike. Under the agreement, Passages’ 50 teachers will see their salaries brought in line with district teachers within three years. Teachers said they also gained increased paraprofessional pay and protections for the school’s largely immigrant school population. The school’s roughly 420 students will return to school Monday.

On Sunday, the union plans a 3 p.m. solidarity rally on the city’s West Side featuring civil rights activist Rev. William Barber. If school isn’t in session Monday, several student groups say they plan to stage a rally in the Loop.

Negotiators for Service Employees International Union Local 73, which represents 7,500 bus aides, custodians, and special education aides who are also on strike, also said they returned to the bargaining table Saturday. In a late-night update, SEIU leaders said they were still waiting on a counterproposal from the city.

In Chicago, growth in Advanced Placement participation not reaching all students equally

2019-10-25T12:00:21+00:00

This story was co-published with Crain’s Chicago Business, as part of a Crain’s Forum project on education.

Soon after school started this fall, Eseosa Ogbeifun decided he wanted to drop one of the most challenging courses at Chicago’s Stephen T. Mather High School.

“My friends were like, ‘Why are you taking AP bio?’ It was so hard,” says Ogbeifun, a senior. “I kind of got defeated.”

His counselor, Sara Wong, intervened. “I was trying to get away from that opt-out culture,” she says. “I said, ‘I want you to show up and to try.’ ”

Wong’s response was shaped by training she has received on how to coax students of color like Ogbeifun, who is black, into Advanced Placement classes as part of a two-year-old Chicago Public Schools initiative.

That initiative aims to combat a worrying trend: A broad expansion of AP enrollment in Chicago schools has been driven largely by white and Asian students, with Latino growth slower and fewer black students enrolled in AP courses overall.

AP was designed to give students a shot at college-level work while in high school and to give those who earned at least a 3 out of 5 on a final exam a leg up with college credit. The College Board, the nonprofit that operates the program, honored Chicago in 2017 and 2018 for increasing AP enrollment, particularly among students of color.

But a closer look at the data shows that the growth did not reach all students equally.

As the number of students taking AP courses in Chicago rose by nearly 13 percent between 2014 and 2019, the number of black students taking the courses actually fell by 26 percent. Now, black students make up 20 percent of students in AP courses, compared to 37 percent of the district’s total population.

At the same time, the number of Latino students taking AP courses increased by 17 percent, while the number of white and Asian students shot up. Last year, they made up nearly a third—twice their share of the city’s student population.

Many factors contributed. Chicago’s student population fell by 10 percent from 2014-19, with black students making up the bulk of the decline, but black student enrollment in AP courses fell at a faster rate than the overall black student population. And some schools eliminated AP courses amid enrollment declines and budget cuts, while others adopted a different rigorous curriculum, International Baccalaureate.

Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson says low expectations for students of color have also played a role—and that’s something the district is working hard to change.

“As a former principal who started an AP program at two high schools—a neighborhood high school and a selective-enrollment high school—I can tell you the challenges were the same: getting people to see beyond test scores and the color of a student’s skin,” says Jackson. “It takes changing a belief system, not only of teachers and administrators, but also changing the belief system of the students, because sometimes they are taught to believe these courses aren’t for them.”

A hallway at Mather High School, one of the most diverse high schools in Chicago.

Mather High is a laboratory for what it takes to change that belief system. The diverse West Ridge school draws students with a wide range of academic preparedness. One-quarter of its 1,500 students speak English as a second language, and nearly 90 percent are from low-income families.

Five years ago, about 250 Mather students took AP courses. Last year, that number was 500. Recent gains have come close to making AP enrollment proportional across racial groups—a rarity in the city school system.

What changed, according to Principal Peter Auffant, is that in 2017 Mather began working with a nonprofit group called Equal Opportunity Schools to identify more black and Latino students who could succeed in AP courses. (The group began working with six Chicago high schools in 2017 and now works with 12, at a price tag of $235,000 a year.)

“We have had to change the mindset of teachers about why potential students are getting missed, and change the traditional narrative about what AP students are,” says Auffant.

The consultants put the entire Mather staff through an implicit bias exercise to challenge perceptions about students’ abilities by race. The group surveyed every student about goals, possible roadblocks and enthusiasm for taking AP classes. And it helped launch a system that flags students whose interest and test scores make them good candidates for enrolling.

“There are kids who say, ‘Sign me up—no one ever asked me to be in an Advanced Placement course before,’ ” Wong says. “But then there are others who are hesitant. We target those students, and, often, when we talk to them, they tell us they are afraid of failing.”

But educators say how students perform on the courses’ final exams is beside the point. “I’m trying to focus more on the question of, what are they coming in with and what are they leaving with? And how does that set them up for the next class?” says Daniel Izzo, who teaches AP psychology. Only 1 in 5 students who took that exam last year earned a passing score, he says. (The city’s overall pass rate has risen sharply even as more students have taken the exams, to 50 percent in 2019.)

Mather High School Principal Peter Auffant

More significant, Auffant says, is that students see that the adults around them believe in their ability to tackle high-level work.

Nearly every staffer at Mather comes in early, stays late and pitches in to ensure the teenagers persist. Tim Odueyungbo, a 17-year-old senior, says his basketball coach launched a pre-practice study hall after four players began taking AP courses. Another student says his AP calculus teacher has been tutoring students starting at 6:30 a.m. A counselor started a stress-and-anxiety club that teaches meditation.

“Teachers are offering to help even after school on Fridays, or during their lunch periods, or their free times,” says Oswaldo Grajeda, a sophomore taking AP U.S. history.

After two years of Chicago’s more concerted AP enrollment push, there is some evidence it’s working. At the initial six schools in the Equal Opportunity Schools pilot, AP enrollment was 30 percent higher last year than in 2017, and students of all racial groups enrolled.

Principals districtwide have been encouraged to look at their data and act on it, and the proportion of black AP students at campuses that offer the courses has subsequently risen by 5 percentage points in just two years. And some students are taking a different set of advanced courses, International Baccalaureate, which is now offered on 22 campuses, often in lieu of AP.

But if Mather is any example, the burden on already-taxed school staff is steep—and, at least according to research, the benefits for students are unclear.

“It requires a lot of work from a teacher—and sometimes rethinking how you teach,” says Suneal Kolluri, a researcher at the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education.

Last year, Kolluri examined 50 studies of AP tests and classes and found little evidence that students who take the courses do better in college later, or that AP courses are better than career or dual-enrollment courses at getting students on track for later success. (Chicago is expanding those offerings, too.)

But people on the ground say they are already seeing the benefits. At Peace & Education Coalition Alternative High School, Principal Brigitte Swenson last year assigned 20 students to AP Spanish—practically unheard of at a school designed for students who have struggled. (The school is not part of the Equal Opportunity Schools initiative.)

“Their initial response on the first day of the class was complete shock,” Swenson recalls. “Some said, ‘You gotta be kidding me. We’re taking AP here?’ And the messaging back to them was, ‘You can do this.’ ”

In the end, Ogbeifun, who wanted to drop AP Biology at Mather, accepted the challenge. The talk with his counselor stuck with him. So did a similar conversation with his biology teacher.

“She said she has high hopes for me,” Ogbeifun recalls. “She said, ‘I think you could do this.’ And I decided, you know, why not?”

Here are the 5 big issues in Chicago’s teachers contract dispute — and where negotiations stand

2019-10-23T13:46:08+00:00

At times it may seem that Chicago and its teachers union are litigating every single facet of teaching and learning in local schools during the dispute that resulted in the current teacher strike. But in fact, union officials have said five issues make up their core demands.

As the city enters a fifth day of canceled classes and rallies (follow our live coverage here), we’re summarizing where each of those issues stands — and what could happen with them as negotiations continue.

SUPPORT STAFFING

Where things stand and what’s at stake: The union wants the city to hire thousands more teachers, social workers, and nurses and to put the hiring plan into the contract. A win here would make a difference for students, if the new positions can be filled (there are shortages in several critical categories that complicate hiring). Guarantees of new workers would also position the union to grow its ranks even though the school district is shrinking.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot pledged this summer to hire hundreds more support staff and phase them in over five years, but only this week did she agree to write some staffing targets into the contract. She also promised to have a nurse and a social worker at every school by 2024, and provide a special education case worker for every school with a concentration of students with disabilities.

What we’re hearing: Stepping back from their initial request, the union has agreed to a phase-in plan that would focus on high-need schools first. But the sides are battling over how to measure staff and enforce the plan. The union wants language that would allow it to file grievances if those goals are not met.

CLASS SIZE

Where things stand and what’s at stake: The union’s expired contract caps class sizes, but schools often exceed them with no penalty. Relief, offered through a class size committee with no budget or enforcement power, can be a long time coming, if at all.

The union wants the district to lower class size caps and, for the first time, to compensate teachers whose classes exceed those counts — not an uncommon provision in union contracts elsewhere.

What we’re hearing:The city’s latest public proposal did not budge on the current caps — 28 in kindergarten through fifth grade; and 31 in middle and high schools — but it did establish a pot of money to hire more teacher assistants in overcrowded classrooms through high school. The union said this was a good step, but that the funding offered wasn’t sufficient to lower class sizes

The issue remains unresolved.

TEACHER PREP TIME

Where things stand and what’s at stake: The city and union have gone back and forth on issues around how much time during the school day teachers get to spend on work that doesn’t involve working directly with students, and about who controls that time. Currently, the union is asking for teachers to get 30 more minutes per day for prep for elementary teachers. To accommodate that request, schools would either have to start later or the district would pay teachers an additional sum to arrive earlier. The city’s current offer is for no change from how things are now — a significant concession from its earlier demands that principals be able to direct a much larger portion of the time.

What we’re hearing: Mayor Lori Lightfoot and schools chief Janice Jackson have signaled that they would hold the line against shortening the instructional day. Teachers on picket lines have said prep time is a big issue in schools where educators already feel stretched thin, and unions officials say the issue could be decisive in making a deal.

CONTRACT LENGTH

Where things stand and what’s at stake: City Hall says it will only agree to a five-year contract. The union wants a three-year term. This matters because how long a contract lasts determines the timing of the next negotiations. A three-year horizon would put pressure on the current mayor to make another deal with the union right before she’s up for reelection. A five-year horizon would give her some breathing room — and more time to fund and ramp up staffing to fulfill the same agreements.

What we’re hearing: The city says it needs a five-year contract to pull off all of the changes the union is demanding. But the union says it will agree to a five-year contract only if it wins some key demands. Its request for a shorter contract is in line with labor trends: The most common length of a teachers union contract is three years, the National Center on Teaching Quality found in 2015. So far, neither side has publicly offered a compromise (and there’s an obvious one here, mathematically, though it would fall right in the middle of the next mayoral election).

TEACHER PAY

Where things stand and what’s at stake: The city has offered significant pay increases to teachers at all levels, although the city and union have different takes on just how significant. The union is still pushing for higher pay for veteran teachers and for paraprofessionals, who include teachers aides. Chicago is a district that struggles to fill all of its teaching positions. Earlier this year, the union won pay increases for paras in the contracts it negotiated for teachers at a handful of charter schools — suggesting that the issue could be a top priority for union negotiators.

What we’re hearing: The district is offering to raise salaries on average by more than 8% for paraprofessionals and school-related personnel, with an immediate 14% pay hike for hard-to-staff nurse positions. The union says there hasn’t yet been an agreement on paraprofessionals pay. It also wants higher automatic pay bumps as teachers accrue seniority.

However, pay issues haven’t been a focus at the bargaining table in “weeks,” Lightfoot said over the weekend. But that may be by design. Legally, the union can’t strike over anything other than compensation issues. Reaching an agreement on pay would make it impossible for the union to keep pressing on class size, support staffing, and other issues, so expect teacher pay to be the last issue to be settled.

Negotiations deadlocked as Chicago looks toward its fifth day without school

2019-10-23T03:35:42+00:00

After pulling back most of its negotiators for a day in protest, the Chicago Teachers Union said it spent Tuesday “rebuilding” and will return to the bargaining table in full force to pursue a contract.

The union’s diminished bargaining team produced no major agreements on the key issues of class size, staffing or prep time, officials said after bargaining wrapped up about 6 p.m. Tuesday.

For now, the strike of 25,000 educators will continue at least through Wednesday, with no regular classes in session. Hints of member preparations indicate the walkout will last through the week’s end.

Teachers plan to join a large rally downtown Wednesday, when Mayor Lori Lightfoot is scheduled to give her first city budget address.

Lightfoot surprised and angered the union when she proposed this week that it return to classrooms before settling on a contract and also insisted the city had no more money — other than what it had already conceded — to offer.

“We had momentum Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and the oxygen left the room yesterday [with a letter sent by the mayor asking the union to end the strike yet continue negotiations],” union Vice President Stacy Davis Gates said. We rebuilt some of that energy today. We hope to have some more going in to tomorrow. We want a settlement, but they have to put in real resources for it.”

Earlier Tuesday, the mayor told reporters that the union’s warning that the strike would not end quickly was “overstating things dramatically.” She also warned that what the city has already agreed to in the contract could come at a high cost — $500 million more across five years than the previous teachers contract costs.

“We have to live within our means,” said Lightfoot, mentioning the letter that she and schools chief Janice Jackson sent Monday.

Tuesday featured more picket lines — drawing attention and support beyond Chicago as videos of dancing teacher-protesters spread online — and boisterous rallies. The largest featured Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a leading Democratic nominee for president.

In negotiations, coaches spoke to the City Hall bargaining team about the district’s lack of athletic resources, an issue that surfaced earlier in the week.

Meanwhile, Lightfoot, her wife Amy Eshleman, and CPS’ Jackson made a morning stop at Marwen, a nonprofit arts center in the Gold Coast that is caring for and feeding students. Lightfoot said the strike was inflicting hardship on families.

Chicagoans will closely watch Lightfoot’s first budget address on Wednesday for how she proposes to fill a projected $838 million budget hole — whether she’ll tap new revenue, downsize programs, propose new taxes, or hint at spending more on schools.

While the budgets for Chicago Public Schools and the city are separate, the union has argued that the city should divert some tax surplus funds to schools from an account — known as tax increment financing, or TIF — it uses to spur development in blighted areas.

“There is money for downtown development, but not money for our schools,” union Chief of Staff Jennifer Johnson said Tuesday evening. “TIF surplus is one of the ways the mayor can find money for our schools.”

But City Hall insists that the union’s demands exceed fiscal sustainability. Lightfoot has said there is “no more money” to meet additional union demands.

“We want to make sure there is a full appreciation of CPS’ financial position,” Jackson told reporters. “This idea that we are flush with cash and just sitting on it and not spending it is just not true.”

The city and union are negotiating a class size committee that would help alleviate overcrowding and on hiring additional social workers and nurses for schools. Negotiators have not forged a solution to the union’s demand for more teacher prep time.

Live updates from Day 3 of the Chicago teachers strike: A quick settlement ‘not likely,’ union says

2019-10-22T02:09:00+00:00

Monday dawned with no deal, no school, and rain in the forecast. Striking Chicago teachers planned picket lines at schools in the morning — including a South Side picket line they said would stretch for seven miles. An afternoon rally was set to start at 2 p.m. at Union Park and include support staff from Service Employees International Union 73.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s schedule for Monday put her on the West Side announcing a “groundbreaking initiative” with a bank CEO, not in teachers union talks.

We’ll be providing updates throughout the day from picket lines, negotiations, and public appearances by the mayor and union officials. Stay tuned!

7:35 p.m. Talks sour

After another day of bargaining, a large team of union members emerge from Malcolm X and say that any hopes of a quick settlement are “dashed.”

“Unless there’s a change at the top of the city in regards to their willingness to make meaningful changes, we’re not likely seeing a quick settlement to the current strike,” says union President Jesse Sharkey. We will post a full update soon.

The mayor today has dashed our hopes for a quick settlement, says @SharkeyCTU1 pic.twitter.com/qP1Q9DBdsh
— Yana Kunichoff (@Yanazure) October 22, 2019

6:30 p.m. Worries about fallout

Even as parents scrambled to arrange child care and older students rallied to support their teachers, both adults and teens alike expressed concern about the lasting impact of losing several days of school.

“It takes a month to get kids acclimated after summer break, and now we have to start all over,” parent Julie Garner told Ariel. “And teachers are already cramming everything in as it is. Tomorrow is Day Four — that’s a lot of time when it comes to school.”

Ariel reports from Marwen youth center near Cabrini-Green, a Voices of Youth in Chicago Education rally, and a Raise Chicago Coalition gathering at City Hall to demand a $15 minimum wage for youth labor.

4 p.m. It’s official: No school Tuesday

As of 4 p.m., CTU has not scheduled a House of Delegates vote, which would be necessary to end their strike. As a result, it will not be possible to hold classes tomorrow, 10/22. After school programming will not be available at CPS schools. pic.twitter.com/flX6cyCDzM
— ChicagoPublicSchools (@ChiPubSchools) October 21, 2019

3:40 p.m. A special education view

It’s clear that some of the teachers union’s demands would help students with disabilities — such as the call for more nurses. We just published a new First Person piece from the mother of a 12th-grader with special needs who says that many other contract demands would also make a difference for her son, from the call for more librarians to the push for enforceable class size limits.

“When my son was in first grade, the school was overcrowded so they decided to convert the Resource Room into a regular classroom,” writes Catherine Henchek. “As a result, students with disabilities like my son had to do their lessons in the supply closet.”

3:10 p.m. A Springfield target

Monday is still trucking along but we just got a press release about a protest scheduled for Tuesday, at the Chicago office of Illinois Sen. John Cullerton. As the state senate president, Cullerton calls the shots on which bills advance, and the union says he has stopped legislation that would have helped Chicago teachers and students.

“Senate President Cullerton has prevented numerous bills for educational equity from being passed,” the release says “He needs to take accountability for his role in the current CPS strike.”

The release notes two bills specifically: one that would have created an elected school board in Chicago, and another that would have given teachers the legal right to bargain on non-compensation issues. While there are dozens of issues at play in the current negotiations, only the impasses on pay and benefits are legally allowed to hold up a final resolution.

2:40 p.m. Paul Vallas pipes up

One of the many people who lost out to Lori Lightfoot in this year’s race for Chicago mayor has weighed in on the strike — in a way that’s entirely consistent with his approach as fiscally conservative mayoral candidate.

Paul Vallas, a former schools CEO, argues in Crain’s Chicago Business that the new revenue from the state that union leaders say can fund their demands is uncertain.

What happens if the state’s budget—which is dependent on continued robust economic growth, unreliable new casino revenues, unproven new revenue sources like sports betting and cannabis sales and voter approval of a constitutional amendment allowing for a progressive income tax increase—does not realize the revenue needed to sustain a dramatic increase in program spending and fully fund the new school aid formula? This doesn’t even factor in the continued growth in the state’s long-term pension obligations that the state has yet to address. If the state is forced to freeze or even cut spending, will teachers agree to postpone their pay and automatic step increases to avoid layoffs and further school closings?

2:10 p.m. A mounting price tag

The city has put some of the union’s key demands in writing but cannot afford its full requests, an exasperated Mayor Lori Lightfoot said during a press conference this afternoon.

With negotiations still ongoing, the city said it has promised to place one nurse and one social worker in every Chicago school within the next five years, with highest-need schools prioritized, to meet one of the union’s key demands, an increase in school support staff. But that contract provision would push up the total cost of the city’s proposal by hundreds of millions of dollars, Lightfoot said Monday.

How that will be funded remains unclear. The mayor said she won’t be taking any money from the controversial Lincoln Yards development project, and that the city will only sign a deal that it can pay for.

“What we have announced is something CPS can afford and achieve,” Lightfoot said at a Boys and Girls Club where some students out of school during the strike were spending the day.

Earlier on Monday, the mayor announced a new initiative, Invest South West, that would pump $175 million in city funds over three years into a handful of neighborhoods on Chicago’s South and West side.

1 p.m. Class size, support staff, teacher pay … school sports?

Dozens of issues have surfaced in contract talks beyond the five that union officials have said will make or break an eventual deal (class size, support staffing, teacher prep time, pay and benefits, and contract length, if you’re keeping track).

Today a new one took central stage at a midday union press conference: school sports. The union said Monday that it had put forth a proposal for stipends for coaches, more money for facilities and equipment, and transportation to and from practices and games for players. It sent several teachers who also work as coaches to update reporters before their availability was cut short by an angry heckler.

Brad Dowling, a boys basketball coach at Steinmetz High School on the city’s Northwest Side, said his coaching staff turned over every year because of the demands of the job combined with low pay. “A freshman high school coach, after taxes, makes $1,000 a year, and they are spending four months of their lives, including weekends, at practices and games,” he said. “People with families have limits.”

Ken Clark, who coaches golf at Lindblom High School, said that without district-provided transportation, participation is effectively limited to students whose families can get them to tournaments outside the city. And other coaches described old and worn-down equipment, athletic fields that are in disrepair or filled with trash or unlit at night, and a revolving door of volunteers. “School athletic programs have the potential to change kids’ lives if they had the facilities to do so,” said a coach from Taft High School.

High school soccer and tennis players were shut out of a state tournament this weekend because of the teacher strike.

12:40 p.m. A hard no from the union

The Chicago Teachers Union may have mocked the city’s request for teachers to go back to work while bargaining continued, but we wanted to make sure that was the same as saying no.

Alison Eichorn, a teacher and coach at Lindblom High School who’s on the union’s negotiating team, offered a response during this afternoon’s union briefing. It was clear as day.

“That’s not going to happen,” Eichorn said. “I don’t know if the mayor is familiar with what unions do, but we’ve gotten more tentative agreements in two days than we’ve gotten in 10 months.”

11:53 a.m. City asks union to end strike without a deal

Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson have asked the Chicago Teachers Union to call off the strike — without a deal.

“The students and families of Chicago cannot afford to be out of school for any longer,” Lightfoot and Jackson wrote in a letter to union officials Monday. “We are asking you to end the strike and encourage your members to return to work while bargaining continues.”

The letter emphasizes that families are feeling the strain of finding child care, seniors applying to college are worrying about their applications, and student athletes are forfeiting championship matches. Most importantly, the letter says, “our students’ safety and access to healthy food are far more at risk without the structure of a full school day.”

The union published the letter on Twitter with a dismissive note: “Can someone let @ChicagosMayor know when said ‘put it in writing,’ this isn’t what we meant.”

11:03 a.m. Calling Jesse Jackson

The Chicago Teachers Union says it has asked the Rev. Jesse Jackson to help negotiate with City Hall — and that the city resident and frequent bridge-builder has agreed.

“Every student in the city of Chicago should have access to great local public schools, and places that are safe, welcoming and meet their social and emotional needs. For that dream to become a reality, it will require that all parties come to the table with fairness, justice and equity in mind,” Jackson said in a union press release. “While understanding the budget concerns being made by the mayor, I’m also very sensitive to the voices of educators, who are often the ones on the day to day front lines with the students.

“I pray that my voice at the table will be the catalyst necessary for a fair and equitable deal to be reached.”

Jackson attended one bargaining session last week. He also played a key role in resolve Chicago teachers’ 1987 strike, which lasted for 19 days.

10:45 a.m. A casualty: Wednesday’s school board meeting

Chicago Public Schools has announced that this month’s school board meeting, scheduled for Wednesday, has been postponed.

The obvious question, and a reassuring answer, came almost immediately:

No. The board has to post the agenda by Monday morning in order to hold a Wednesday meeting. That's why the announcement went out today.
— ChicagoPublicSchools (@ChiPubSchools) October 21, 2019

10:40 a.m. A 7-mile picket

Daniela Hernandez, Oscar Guillen and Tania Miranda, teachers at Edwards Elementary School, found refuge below an overpass during a seven-mile-long picket line, Oct. 21, 2019.

The rain did little to dampen the spirits of teachers who participated in a seven-mile-long picket line along Pulaski Road, stretching from Curie Metropolitan High School on Archer Avenue to 111th Street.

Teachers wrapped signs in plastic and brought umbrellas, ponchos, and canopies to shield them from the rain during the hourlong picket, during which their cheers were drowned out by a cacophony of horns from passing vehicles.

“We’ll be here as long as it takes,” said Tania Miranda, a third-grade teacher at Edwards Elementary School in Archer Heights. “It’s tiring, but it’s empowering, and it’s worth it.”

For negotiators, Miranda had a simple message from the picket line: “Keep fighting for us,” she said. “We got your back, as long as it takes.”

A high school teacher had the idea of lining the South Side thoroughfare with educators, said Juan Padilla, a math teacher at Curie. “It gives us more visibility, and you see this huge line and realize it’s not just a few teachers,” Padilla said. “That strength in numbers is huge.”

But even as teachers said they remained confident that union negotiators were advocating effectively for them and their students, some said they were beginning to grow concerned about their students. Sixth-grade language arts teacher Oscar Guillen said he had given students reading assignments to complete while their teachers were on strike.

“But I stopped at three [days],” Guillen said, “because I didn’t think we were going to go that far.”

9:30 am. Student athletes barred from competition

Student athletes who have been barred from participating in state competitions because of the strike report said over the weekend that they are appealing to the state athletic association. WBEZ reports Monday morning that Chicago Public Schools will not allow the students to participate because it does not want to put coaches in a position where they have to potentially cross a picket line. The state athletic association says it is unlikely to hear the students’ appeals.

9:15 a.m. SEIU to go back to the table

A spokesperson for SEIU73 tells Chalkbeat that negotiators for the union and City Hall are set to return to the table at 3 p.m. on Monday. The last session was Wednesday, and, over the weekend, reports surface that the next bargaining date has not yet been set.

Some 7,500 school support staff, from bus aides and special education classroom assistants to custodians and school security officers, have joined picket lines with striking teachers.

Because of the varied jobs covered by the union, the demands range widely — custodians want the district to get rid of its cleaning contracts with Aramark and Sodexo, security officers want more staff, and bus aides are particularly focused on pushing for a raise because the hours of their jobs make it difficult to work a second position.

9 a.m. Rain starts, and so do negotiations

Rain starts coming down in parts of the city, and more tarps go up on picket lines. Negotiations are set to start at 9:30 a.m., again at Malcolm X, with a midday update planned.

Teachers incorporate the weather into signs (click here for some of our favorite signs from Day One of the strike). One spotted at Suder Montessori reads “Soaking but not joking.” Another: “It’s raining — but I’m out here holding this sign.”

Some teachers report that passersby have dropped off ponchos for them to use.

At National Teachers Academy on the South Side, teachers bring out speakers and blast Missy Elliott to keep spirits up.

We stand with @MissyElliott out here in the rain for a #faircontractnow #CTUSEIUstrike pic.twitter.com/2GuqwZXfXA
— Autumn Laidler (@MsLaidler) October 21, 2019

@CTULocal1 #CTUSEIUstrike #PutItInWriting #faircontractnow

Glad to have the support of our @GWHS_Patriots Ss like Anely!

Making the most of the rain today 😊🌧🌦☂️☔@ms_rivera91 pic.twitter.com/LZtirXVm7Q
— Donald Davis (@ddteachpaz) October 21, 2019

7 a.m. Always be prepared

Teachers arriving at schools early to start 6:30 a.m. picket lines report an eye-popping pink sunrise. They start putting up tarps at some campuses anyway: There’s rain in the forecast set to start at 9 a.m. (You know what sailors say about red skies in the morning …)

Beautiful sunrise in Back of the Yards for Day 3 of #CTUSEIUstrike. Yeah, it's gonna rain, but we're still out here fighting for a #faircontractnow pic.twitter.com/rhEq5WJHiz
— Gregory Michie (@GregoryMichie) October 21, 2019

6:30 a.m. Where things stand

Over the weekend, Lightfoot and schools chief Janice Jackson lamented the pace of negotiations and said the teachers union had not responded quickly enough to counterproposals on two key issues: class size and support staffing.

The union said one holdup was how new agreements on those issues would be enforced. The current contract contains class size guidelines, for example, but a committee established to oversee the issue has had little authority.

As of Sunday night, there was no final consensus yet on three other sticking points: pay and benefits for veteran teachers, the length of the contract, and teacher prep time.

Tentative agreements had been reached, union leaders said, on funding for dedicated staff who would support homeless students and protections to keep counselors from being pulled away for non-counseling duties. They also agreed on 10:1 student-to-staff ratios in early childhood classrooms and language that could make it easier for teachers there to set nap times, the union said.

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.

10 things to watch as a teachers strike begins in Chicago

2019-10-16T21:28:14+00:00

For weeks, Chicago has been riveted by jousting between the Chicago Teachers Union and City Hall.

But now that a strike is all but assured, attention is turning to the 300,000-some students whose teachers and support staff will be walking out of schools. In the 48 hours leading up to the strike, there have been robocalls and e-mails to parents about contingency plans for child care, and nonprofit groups have scrambled to help children across the city who rely on schools for safety, food, and warmth.

Here’s what we’ll be watching as the strike begins. (And keep updated with our Chicago contract tracker.)

1. What will happen next with negotiations?

The strike will launch the monthslong negotiations into a new phase. The union has yet to agree to the city’s latest pay deal because it is holding out on broader school quality issues, such as staffing and class size.

One of the sticking points between City Hall and the teachers union is whether to put specific numbers of support staff — think nurses, social workers, special education case workers — in the contract. Lightfoot, who has verbally committed to adding hundreds of new positions across the next five years, said on Tuesday that she’s willing to put some commitments in writing. And the union has eased up on its demand, by agreeing to staff the neediest schools first. But they’ve yet to agree on the numbers or whether those positions will be funded by the central office or individual schools.

Lightfoot has similarly said that she’s willing to commit to certain class size numbers in the contract, but the union charged on Wednesday that the mayor was not willing to lower class size caps nor compensate teachers whose classes exceed the caps.

Budging on either of these points could be costly. Lightfoot’s predecessor, Rahm Emanuel, paid for concessions he made in the 2016 teachers contract win in part by raiding an $88 million city account intended to help spur the redevelopment of blighted areas.

The union has urged Lightfoot to make a similar move — even though Chicago Public Schools is on firmer financial footing now than it was three years ago. The mayor has at her disposal some of the additional $181 million in tax-increment financing accounts (dollars generated from taxing neighborhood development to fund future improvements) last year. But at the same time, the city faces a budget hole north of $800 million.

2. Will parents and the public stick with the union?

In a recent poll conducted by the Chicago Sun-Times and ABC7, nearly half of respondents said they supported a possible teachers strike, and about two-thirds said public school children would be most hurt by a strike.

Even so, public support could start to wane if the strike wears on for several days.

Some 38% opposed a strike. About a quarter of survey respondents were public school parents.

Elsewhere and in previous strikes, teachers have enjoyed wider support. In Denver last year, a poll found that 82% of voters supported a strike in the days before one began.

3. What will happen inside school buildings?

City officials have said all schools will remain open during their normal hours and any students who show up will be served breakfast and lunch. But there won’t be any academics or after-school activities, and there will be minimal staffing, especially since support staff are also slated to go on strike.

Two days into the strike in 2012, less than 7% of district students showed up at the half-day sites the district opened for students — a small fraction of the some 403,000 students who were enrolled at the time. (The district later extended those hours.) Some parents also expressed concern about the supervision that was offered. And as the strike dragged on that year, the district eventually turned to online coursework to help students keep on top of their studies. By the end of the seven-day strike, the district said about 8% of students had gone to a contingency site or one of the nonprofit, park or library sites that were set up to accommodate families.

4. How will students who rely on subsidized school meals eat?

So many Chicago students come from low-income families that the city makes lunch available for free to all students. That means even one day where students stay home from school puts many children at risk of going hungry.

The Food Depository, Chicago’s food bank, has announced that it will supply “light snacks and fruit” at libraries, YMCAs, and Park District locations across the city. Some neighborhoods with many low-income families will also get a cold meal option. (Find the location nearest you here.)

That plan is in place for Thursday and Friday. “If the strike continues beyond that point, the Food Depository will monitor and respond accordingly in similar fashion,” it announced in a press release Wednesday.

Meanwhile, schools chief Janice Jackson said in a robocall to parents that schools, while minimally staffed, would provide three meals to students who showed up.

5. What happens to students who receive special education services at school?

Since classroom teachers and other support staff won’t be at a school during a strike, the district said students with individualized education programs — legally binding plans for students with disabilities — will not be able to receive specific support.

But the district is still legally obligated to provide services for students with disabilities, even if teachers walk out, said Chris Yun, a policy analyst at Access Living, an advocacy group for people with disabilities.

“Depending on how long the strike goes, it may trigger compensatory services for those students,” Yun said. She suggests parents check their child’s service schedule in advance and document any missing services during the strike so they can be made up once the strike is over.

On Wednesday, schools chief Janice Jackson said the district was working to contract with some nurses to provide care at some schools.

6. What about early childhood education?

Chicago’s preschool system is split between public schools, which will be on strike, and community-based programs run by nonprofits and small business owners, which will be open.

Pre-K teachers employed by the district are unionized, and their classrooms will be dark. The same goes for the district-run early learning centers, such as the Barbara Vick Early Childhood Center on the city’s South Side.

The city’s community-based preschools and child care centers will remain open, since their providers are not CTU members. Some community-based providers are unionized through Service Employees International Union’s Healthcare division. Those providers will be working because their union is a different local from SEIU73, whose support staff members plan to strike.

7. How long will the strike last?

Probably not long, according to the advice that union leaders offered to parents on Tuesday night. Union chief Jesse Sharkey urged Chicagoans to gird themselves for “a short-term strike that is going to cause some difficulty and pain.”

Last year’s strike in Denver lasted for three days, while Los Angeles teachers stayed off the job for six school days in January.

Then there’s a practical consideration: Teachers who strike don’t get paid. The union’s FAQ for teachers emphasizes that a paycheck expected on Oct. 25 will be based on pre-strike work and thus will be its regular amount, but the subsequent check — which will hit bank accounts as the holiday season approaches — will be thinner.

8. What will happen at charter schools?

The 2012 strike was the first time that a major city had a large swath of charter schools, which typically are not unionized, remain open during a teachers union strike. Now, 6% of Chicago students attend charter schools, potentially heightening this divide.

In recent years, the Chicago Teachers Union has worked to organize teachers at the privately managed, publicly funded schools, and teachers at 12 schools are now represented by the union. But because they are working under different contracts, their schools will remain open.

9. What will teachers do while they’re on strike?

A strike can amount to a bit of a vacation for students, but teachers are not supposed to stay home. Each morning, the union expects its teachers to picket at their own schools from 6:30 a.m.-10:30 a.m., according to guidelines the union distributed to strike leaders. In the afternoon, the union will hold rallies “at various locations downtown” but hasn’t yet released sites or times. In 2012, the union brought members together in front of Chicago Public Schools headquarters as well as in a series of downtown rallies.

10. Will the weather cooperate?

The union’s instructions to strike leaders included an essential piece of advice: “Dress appropriately for the weather.” Right now, the forecast is for comfortable temperatures and clear skies for Thursday and Friday, ideal conditions for extended picketing by teachers and their union. Next week looks a lot wetter — offering one more incentive for the city and union to reach an agreement before Monday.

Chicago begins contingency planning in event of teacher strike

2019-10-03T20:31:22+00:00

Chicago has started planning for how its worst-case scenario — a joint walkout of its 25,000 teachers and 8,000 support staff, bus aides, and lunchroom workers — could impact local families.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and schools chief Janice Jackson have said the 514 district-run schools impacted by the strike would remain open and minimally staffed by principals and non-unionized support personnel. During the city’s 2012 strike, central office staff members were deployed to schools to help manage students whose families did not have other alternatives.

The city’s 119 charter schools will remain in session during any district teacher walkout.

During the last citywide teacher strike in 2012, about 5,000 students attended programs run by the city’s park district. This year, the union that represents the majority of park workers is threatening a strike on the same day as teachers, which could narrow options for parents.

On Wednesday night, after the teachers union announced a strike date of Oct. 17, Chicago Public Schools published a contingency plan webpage.

“The safety of our students remains our highest priority,” Jackson said on a video atop the page.

After-school programs, games, and sports and arts practices would be closed.

Chicago Public Schools has also posted an address lookup tool that will let families see child care options as the strike date nears. Some libraries might run daytime programs, the city has said.

Meanwhile, community organizations are stepping up. The YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago, which offered day camps during charter school strikes last school year, will offer a first-come, first-serve Schools Day Out program, which lets families drop off children from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. at 10 locations citywide. (Costs depend on location and hours served.) “Our program staff doesn’t just provide child care,” a spokeswoman for the YMCA said. “They implement an enriching, research-based curriculum.”

The Jewish Community Center of Chicago is planning strike-day camps that include an International Day and a Star Wars-themed day. The costs are $80 for 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. camps, and $20 for aftercare.

Albany Park Community Center, which operates a center on the city’s Northwest Side and recently opened a second Bronzeville outpost, can care for around 100 children, up to age 12, at its site. The cost for families would be $25 a day.

The parent advocacy group Raise Your Hand has begun compiling other options, such as the Beverly Arts Center’s “If CPS Strikes, We Have Your BAC-k Camp,” which would run from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily at a cost of $38 for members and $42 for non-members (scholarships will be available).

Raise Your Hand will update the list of options on this site.

Chalkbeat is surveying parents about their strike-related questions. You can submit a question in English or in Spanish, and we will do our best to get them answered.

With no deal yet, Chicago teachers set strike for Oct. 17

2019-10-03T03:06:00+00:00

If negotiations between Chicago and its teachers union fail to result in a deal, teachers will walk out and potentially shut down 500-some public schools on Oct. 17. That’s the same day that a separate union representing school aides has threatened to strike.

Simultaneous strikes by educators and school support staff could complicate the district’s efforts to keep schools open and minimally staffed while teachers are on the picket lines.

“This is also frankly a unified strike date,” said Chicago Teachers Union President Jesse Sharkey.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot and schools chief Janice Jackson pledged in a statement that they would keep up “aggressive” bargaining, but if teachers strike, “all CPS school buildings will remain open during their normal school hours to ensure students have a safe and welcoming place to spend the day and warm meals to eat.”

Announcing the strike date Wednesday night after a House of Delegates vote inside headquarters, Sharkey stood flanked by members of Service Employees International Union 73, which represents staff such as bus monitors, special education assistants, and lunchroom workers.

“The reason we have set a deadline two weeks from now is because we intend to continue bargaining in good faith,” Sharkey said. “But I don’t want anyone in the city of Chicago to doubt our resolve. We mean to improve the conditions in our schools. We mean to win a fair contract.”

The delegate meeting and vote energized special education teacher Deborah Yaker. The union has demanded improved staffing, more integrity in the Individualized Education Program process, and dedicated substitutes, among other conditions for special education. All of them are essential, said Yaker, who teaches at Hanson Park Elementary in Belmont Cragin. “It’s only to better our kids.”

Ramona T. Bonilla-Anaiel, a special education classroom aide at Lakeview High School, said she finally felt heard when members decided to strike. “We need more people, we need more staff,” said Bonilla-Anaiel, who described students missing out on their legally prescribed assistance because aides were pulled to watch other students or help with administrative tasks.

Negotiations could continue up to the strike date. In 2016, the city’s contract negotiations with the Chicago Teachers Union also were contentious, and observers saw a strike as nearly inevitable. But district officials made several concessions at the last minute, averting a walkout.

Not even five months in office, Lightfoot is facing a potential threat of triple strikes. Besides the teachers and school support staff, Chicago Park District employees, who during the 2012 strike cared for students displaced by closed schools, also took a strike authorization vote last week. They are represented by the same union as the school support staff.

Wednesday’s vote polled members of the Chicago Teachers Union’s House of Delegates, which represents various groups of teachers — some at schools and some, like clinicians and social workers, who work citywide. The union represents more than 25,000 teachers and support staff, including paraprofessionals and school social workers.

Last week, 94% of union members voted to authorize a strike.

Setting a strike date increases pressure on Lightfoot and the city to come to an agreement with the union, or face a walkout.

“Our members are hard workers, they serve the youth of Chicago, and they deserve a better contract,” said SEIU73 President Dian Palmer, speaking Wednesday after the strike date was announced. “Chicago can do better. I’ve seen the amounts of money that people make, but our members don’t.”

SEIU has argued that its members’ starting salary of just above $31,000 is unacceptably low.

Laying out the city’s side of the negotiations to the public earlier this week, Lightfoot and Jackson published a 420-word blog Monday explaining details of the city’s contract offer to teachers and offering an 8% pay hike for paraprofessionals.

The city’s latest public offer to SEIU resembles the pay offer to teachers: a 16% raise across five years. As it has offered teachers, the city would absorb the rising cost of health premiums for the first three years of the deal.

Lightfoot has said that her latest offer to the city’s teachers will make them among the highest-paid educators in the country.

The union has disregarded her offer, insisting the city lower class sizes, add support staff and put those guarantees in writing.

The teachers union contract with the district expired June 30.

The city’s last full-fledged teacher strike was in 2012. That year, teachers walked off the job for the first time in 25 years. After seven days, they returned with gains significant enough to portray the strike as successful.

Chicago schools chief asks Congress for more federal help to address childhood trauma

2019-09-11T19:49:09+00:00

Chicago schools chief Janice Jackson traveled to Washington, D.C., Wednesday to deliver a testimony to a House committee about the district’s struggle against forces like poverty and gun violence that affect how students learn and behave in the classroom.

She began with the story of two students she’d spoken to, “who live in a world where trust is scarce and anger is overly abundant.”

“They described their communities in their own words as places where no one can be trusted,” she said. “For these children, navigating violence and poverty is a way of life.”

Jackson, whose national profile has been rising, was one of four public officials who spoke Wednesday before the U.S. House Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education Subcommittee. The hearing focused on practices that educators are using to support students affected by gun violence and other traumatic experiences.

The latest police statistics show Chicago crime is down compared with last year, including shootings and murders. But despite the trend, violence still wracks the lives of many Chicagoans, especially youth.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot has spent much of her first 100 or so days in office trying to get a handle on the problem, while teachers continue to wrestle with how to approach the subject in their classrooms (read one educator’s first-person account here). Jackson called on Capitol Hill to step up and provide more financial support to Chicago and other districts working to address childhood trauma.

“Only when our country’s leaders unite behind this call can the range of quality treatment services for these students began to fully meet their needs and put them on the road to recovery and a productive and fulfilling life,” she said.

Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson.

Jackson made the point, as did other speakers, that children exposed to trauma are at higher risk of lower grades, poor attendance, behavior problems, and dropping out. Trauma can also trigger mental health issues and substance abuse, she said.

Jackson touted several tools the district is using to support students, including the Summer for Change program. The six-week program provided 430 youth “at risk for being impacted by violence” with trauma-informed therapy, mentoring, and enrichment opportunities. (Chalkbeat visited the program in its final week. You can find our dispatch here.)

She told the subcommittee about the district’s focus on social and emotional learning, targeted interventions for students coping with anxiety and depression, and “discipline practices that are moving us away from suspensions and expulsions and toward uncovering the root cause of negative behavior while keeping kids in school where they belong.”

Also on the panel were California Surgeon General Nadine Burke Harris, Oklahoma state schools Superintendent Joy Hofmeister, and Ingrida Barker, associate superintendent of McDowell County Schools in Welch, West Virginia.

‘I’m not satisfied.’ Chicago schools chief touts academic gains, but aims to do better for black and brown boys

2019-08-29T23:12:00+00:00

After a week of touting new student performance data, including record-high graduation rates, Chicago schools chief Janice Jackson said Thursday that the district was on the right track heading into the 2019-20 school year.

But she also acknowledged that Chicago Public Schools needs to raise the achievement of African-American and Latinx students — boys in particular.

The city announced on Thursday that almost 79% of Chicago’s seniors graduated in five years this spring, compared with closer to 78% the year prior.

“I’m not satisfied,” Jackson said of the district’s performance. “I like the incremental growth, but we need to see exponential growth, particularly among our African-American male and Latino male students, if we’re going to meet the goals we’ve outlined in our vision.”

Her comments followed a stirring 20-minute speech Thursday afternoon to a gathering of business and civic leaders organized by the City Club of Chicago. In the speech, Jackson highlighted district investments in new programs and curriculum at neighborhood schools, a renewed focus on early career and college credentials, commitments to hiring more school support staff, and universal Pre-K expansion as ways to “level the playing field.”

Asked after the speech about the specific approaches the district is taking to close racial and gender disparities in graduation rates, Jackson said new attention to what students are being taught would be key.

“I think in order to get to the 90 percent graduation rate that we’ve outlined in our vision, we have to have strong curriculum and academic programs in our schools, which is why we’re making a commitment around more IB and STEM programs, and a quality curriculum in every school,” she said. “I think by coupling the social emotional support with academic support, we’re going to get there.”

Jackson said the district has prioritized social emotional learning and mentoring for black and brown boys, and will continue to do so, while looking for interventions similar to the Summer for Change program championed by Mayor Lori Lightfoot. The six-week program debuted this summer, providing mentoring, therapy, stipends, and experiential learning to 400 students considered at risk of being victims or perpetrators of violent crime.

On average, black and Latinx students trail their white and Asian peers in many measures of academic success, according to district data. And female students of all races graduate at higher rates than their male counterparts.

Here’s a closer look at graduation rates.

Black students’ graduation rate increased from 71.8% to 73.3% over last year, but still trailed white students’ 87.6% graduation rate.
The Latinx graduation rate declined slightly to 81.2%.
Black males’ 5-year graduation rate in 2019 was 65.4% compared to 81.2% for black females.
Latino males had a 77% graduation rate, compared to 85.5% for Latinas.
Students designated as English language learners, requiring special education services, and economically disadvantaged all have lower graduation rates than their peers without those labels.

Of the four biggest racial groups at the district, Latinx and African-American students have the lowest attainment and growth on the NWEA test in reading and math. Here’s how the scores — released earlier this week — break down.

Just under 63% of Latinx students scored above grade level attainment norms on the NWEA reading test in 2019, compared to 85.4% of Asian students and 84.1% of white students. Black students reading attainment remained flat at 51.2%.
In math, black students attainment actually decreased from 43.3% to 42.9%, which was the lowest among any racial group at the district, behind Latinx students (58.9%), white students (82.5%) and Asian students (89.3%).
Under 56% of black students met grade-level growth norms in reading, compared to 62.4% of Latinx students, 68.2% of white students, and 71.5% of Asian students.
For math growth, 50.9% of black students met grade level norms, compared to 57% of Latinx students, 65% of white students and 71.8% of Asian students.

‘Will we rise to the occasion?’ Mayor Lori Lightfoot issues a challenge to Chicago school administrators two weeks from start of school.

2019-08-16T23:11:28+00:00

Mayor Lori Lightfoot said that one of the toughest questions she faced on the campaign trail came from a graduating senior at Whitney Young High School, who asked at a student-led candidates forum: “What are you going to do in the next four years to convince me I should come back to Chicago, and make Chicago my home?”

Lightfoot, reflecting on the question Friday during a speech at the school district’s fifth annual administrators summit about three weeks after her inauguration, asked the same of the hundreds of principals, assistant principals, and teacher leaders sitting before her.

“Of course it was an intentionally provocative question,” she said, to laughs. “But it’s the right question, it’s what we should all be focused on. What are we doing every single day, each of us, in our own way, to make our city better, stronger, fairer for young people to be able to thrive?”

The mayor holds vast power over Chicago schools, from control of the district’s budget and strategic priorities to decisions about district leadership and school board appointments. Friday’s event put her on stage in front of the school leaders charged with administering Chicago’s more than 600 schools.

Chicago Public Schools held the event at the city’s Symphony Center for school leaders to rally and plan ahead of the new school year around the vision of an equitable school district.

Also in attendance were decision makers who help steer the district, including schools CEO Janice Jackson, Chief Academic Officer Latanya McDade and school board member Elizabeth Todd-Breland, whom Lightfoot appointed earlier this summer after completely overhauling the previous mayor’s board.

For weeks, most of the focus on Lightfoot in the education sphere has been whether she would be able to resolve contentious contract talks with the Chicago Teachers Union. She’s also pledged to reconsider how much money Chicago spends for students and campuses with the most need, promised to bring hundreds of additional school support staff to the district and, with Jackson, announced a $7.7 billion budget, a 1.5% increase over last year.

Chalkbeat and other media members attended the start of the administrators event before being ousted by the mayor and the district’s communication teams.

Lightfoot said convincing graduates to build lives and raise families in Chicago hinges on how well the district prepares students for well-paying jobs and the opportunity for social mobility. She said she and Jackson are committed to bringing resource equity to the district to ensure that schools have the support they need, characterizing the district as “the most important institution in our children’s lives.”

“What can we do to strengthen the lives of our children so that they grow up with hope and inspiration in their heart — not fear, not trauma, but hope and inspiration?” she said. “Our children’s eyes are on us…will we rise to the occasion?”

Lightfoot emphasized the importance of schools and city officials collaborating, and offered advice to help educators weather the stresses of their job.

“Think about the necessity of self-care, and how you can embrace that need, to make sure that you’re doing everything that you can to be strong and supportive of our kids, our families, our teachers and all the support personnel that go into making the classroom environment as productive as possible and as nurturing as possible for our children,” she said.

The mayor also praised Brooks College Prep seventh-grader Alannah Stanley, who delivered a powerful performance of the national anthem to rave reviews Friday morning.

“There are so many amazing children in the city who are doing incredible things every single day,” she said to the administrators, using Stanley as an example. “You know this because you see it in the classroom. But we need to make sure we tell the stories of those children every single day.”

Chicago to spend $820 million on fixing up schools. Is yours on the list?

2019-08-08T22:12:27+00:00

Chicago plans to spend $820 million next year fixing up 300 of its schools and building more pre-K classrooms, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and schools chief Janice Jackson said Thursday, standing in a vintage classroom inside the century-old Morgan Park High School on the city’s Southwest Side.

About $1 in every $7 spent will go toward a universal pre-K expansion.

The rest will go for new roofs, playgrounds, and athletic fields for schools like Morgan Park — which stands to get $23 million for a new roof and new sports fields. The athletic powerhouse, which has 1,230 students but increasingly must compete with in-demand selective enrollment programs nearby, was left out of last year’s $1 billion capital plan announced by Lightfoot’s predecessor, Rahm Emanuel. It was Chicago’s biggest campus investment in decades.

Lightfoot said about half of the district’s schools — some 300 — will receive upgrades in the coming school year. The list is heavy on neighborhood schools, she emphasized.

That fact wasn’t lost on Morgan Park’s Local School Council chairwoman, Carisa Parker, and another longtime council member, Peggy Goddard, who were buzzing at Thursday’s news, part of a larger reveal of the first schools budget of Lightfoot’s tenure.

“We’ve been advocating for this as long as I can remember,” said Parker, a mother of four, who has served eight years on the school council.

The capital plan, which also includes $30 million in new science labs and an $85 million expansion of high-speed internet and other tech upgrades, was “created with a focus on equity, prioritizing the schools and neighborhoods that need investments most,” Lightfoot said. The city’s new mayor recently said she plans to spend the year revisiting the formula that determines how much money individual schools receive.

Find the full list of schools expected to receive upgrades under the proposed plan below.

Outside of the capital plan, the district will spend $6.18 billion in 2019-20, a slight increase from last fiscal year. The new line items announced Thursday include $12 million for teachers and curriculum materials for English language learners and $10 million to boost accessibility for disabled students.

The district also put a price tag — $10 million — on a promise announced last week to add nurses, case workers, and social workers to schools, as well as to invest in recruiting qualified workers.

“It was really important today, as we roll out this budget … to ensure that we’re providing our students, our most vulnerable students, with the resources that they need,” Jackson said.

Including the capital expenses, nearly half of the district’s budget, or about $3.8 billion, will go to staff, materials and other equipment for schools. The district released a school-by-school breakdown in the spring.

The rest goes to pay for teacher pensions, central office positions and network staff, transportation, and other items.

Of the 300 schools that will benefit from Lightfoot’s capital plan, about half of the schools in the district, 105 will receive funds to accommodate pre-K classes or to otherwise serve young learners.

“Particularly for our youngest children, we need to make sure that they feel this blanket of love and support all around them at the earliest age,” Lightfoot said. “We have a commitment and an obligation to our young people and we intend to make that commitment in everything we do.”

Lightfoot, who has been meeting with community preschool providers who have felt slighted by the city’s expansion of pre-K, said she planned to make more announcements in the coming weeks about what direction she plans to take universal pre-K, a plan set in motion by her predecessor. She made it clear the district will continue to offer more seats for 4-year-olds.

Community providers have complained that the district’s expansion of pre-K is causing them to lose students and teachers, making it hard for them to run their businesses.

Jackson said Thursday the district will take out another series of bonds to pay for the bulk of the capital upgrades. The specifics will be made public by the Aug. 28 board of education meeting, she said. The state is expected to provide not quite one-quarter, or $191 million of the total — an amount that was approved last spring as part of a six-year, $45 billion state capital bill. But it’s not clear when that money will be made available.

As of July, Chicago Public Schools had accumulated $8.4 billion in long-term debt, and it was still borrowing to pay for day-to-day operations. According to a financial presentation to the new school board then, it plans to take out $1.25 billion more in short-term loans starting this month. The district takes out short-term loans in anticipation of tax revenues because it has limited reserves.

Chicago is the third largest school district in the country, and the second most indebted, according to research from Chicago-based Merritt Research Services, which analyzes municipal bonds.

Scenes from Chicago Public Schools’ first back-to-school bash full of free stuff

2019-07-31T18:42:35+00:00

Maria Garcia stood in line Tuesday for a bag of free school supplies, watching her two girls chase each other around the bouncy castle and food tent set up outside Hibbard Elementary School in Albany Park.

With her 3-year-old in tow, she was thinking about how the school year will go for her older children: “It depends on them. If they get good grades or not. If they find good friends.”

The summer’s first back-to-school bash hosted by Chicago Public Schools was helping her get ready for the first day of school on Sept. 3 and keep her little ones occupied, Garcia said.

For the district, the bashes fit into a larger effort to build relationships with families. Schools chief Janice Jackson, who earlier in the day unveiled new efforts to reduce teacher turnover, has said in her five-year-plan that she wants to engage parents to ensure the district is “moving in the right direction.”

Chip Johnson, the district’s chief officer of Family and Community Engagement, stood in the sun and surveyed festivities including face painting, a giant blowup basketball hoop, and various groups of students performing Latin dance and tumbling.

The Jesus White tumblers entertain students and parents in front of bouncy castles.

He was expecting to lure more than 700 families Tuesday afternoon with free food, games, music, backpacks full of school supplies, and even immunizations and referrals to health services.

“It’s a community event, so we can get our parents excited about the first day of school,” Johnson said. “[The event] always exceeds my expectations.”

This is the fourth year the district has hosted back-to-school bashes across the city. The office of Family and Community Engagement has spent about $165,000 on these events in the past month, according to district.

Johnson said his office is focused on engaging families, particularly young parents, with programs like back-to-school bashes and the parent university, which provides classes such as advocating for your student, financial literacy, GED courses, and even introductory classes at city colleges.

Three dozen of Chicago’s 52 schools on the Northwest Side sent representatives to greet families and students on Tuesday, according to Johnson. The schools came from two clusters — Network 1 and Network 14 — that include most campuses on the Northwest Side.

Other organizations like City Colleges of Chicago, the Girl Scouts, the Chicago Public Library, and the Chicago Parks Department also joined in on the fun, setting up tables to greet families.

Johnson added that his office provided shuttle buses departing from five schools across the North Side to increase access for parents. Families can find out where transportation to the other 11 bashes is available when registering for the events on the district’s website.

The back-to-school bashes will continue across the city every weekday for the next two weeks. All will be held from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. The schedule is:

Wednesday: Lincoln Square at Mather High School, 5835 N. Lincoln Ave.
Thursday: Hermosa at Marine Leadership Academy, 1920 N. Hamlin Ave.
Friday: Austin/Belmont Cragin at Michele Clark High School, 5101 W. Harrison St.
Monday: Roseland at South Shore High School, 1855 E. 75th St.
Tuesday: Near West Side at Crane High School, 2245 W. Jackson Blvd
Aug. 7: Pilsen/Little Village at Saucedo Elementary School, 2850 W. 24th Blvd.
Aug. 8: Englewood at Lindblom Park District, 6054 S. Damen Ave.
Aug. 9: Woodlawn at William Prep High School, 4934 S. Wabash Ave.
Aug. 12: Ashburn at Durkin Park Elementary School, 8445 S. Kolin Ave.
Aug. 13: Brighton Park at Kelly High School, 4136 S. California Ave.
Aug. 14: Garfield Park at Marshall High School, 3250 W. Adams St.
Aug. 15: West Roseland/Pullman at Fenger High School, 11220 S. Wallace St.

Leonardo Garcia reveals his blue tongue from his popsicle.

Room at the top: Chicago schools chief looks to fill leadership vacancies

2019-07-30T15:42:43+00:00

Chicago Public Schools seeks two critical additions to its senior leadership team — one to oversee the district’s $135 million curriculum overhaul — and the other to lead its troubled special education program amid state-mandated reforms.

The search to fill those vacancies and other cabinet-level positions follows the recent departure of several top officials, some of whom left for bigger titles at smaller districts.

That leaves schools chief Janice Jackson looking to firm up her inner circle amid shifting power dynamics at City Hall under Mayor Lori Lightfoot, and with a new school board more willing to challenge Jackson publicly about policies, as last month’s contentious vote on a new school rating policy showed.

Mike Magee, director of the D.C.-based education policy group Chiefs for Change, said it’s a good sign that other school districts are poaching administrators from Jackson’s cabinet to elevate as superintendents.

The nation’s third-largest school district shouldn’t face any shortage of applicants vying to replace them, he said, calling Chicago an attractive location for upstart school leaders given its scale, buzz around improvements, and Jackson’s rising star.

“Jackson has a reputation as being both a highly effective and innovative leader and someone who cares very deeply about developing her own people,” Magee said. “That makes CPS very attractive to talented emerging education leaders across the country as a place they want to work.”

Those who join Jackson’s team will have their work cut out for them, especially the next special education chief, who will be charged with helping chart a more equitable direction for the district’s office serving students with disabilities — under the watchful eye of the state, advocates and parents.

A state investigation found the district routinely delayed and denied services to students with disabilities, in violation of federal law. The district serves about 52,000 special education students, about 14% of its enrollment, according to the job description.

Former special education chief Elizabeth Keenan left in April to run the Special School District of St. Louis County, Missouri, which serves more than 24,000 students with disabilities and also operates two technical high schools serving about 1,800 high school students. A veteran administrator who used to run Chicago special education, Dick Smith, now serves as its acting director while the district seeks Keenan’s replacement.

In June, Anna Alvarado, the district’s chief of teaching and learning, left to run the Freeport School District, which educates 4,100 students in northwest Illinois. The district is looking for her successor, who will “oversee the creation and implementation of a preK-12 curriculum system,” among other duties, according to the job posting.

The district is also several months into an initiative to bring local teachers and national education companies together to create culturally responsive instructional materials for all subjects and all grades.

This will be the first time the district offers a central repository for curriculum of all levels, which previously was left up to teachers and principals at schools to develop. Teachers won’t be required to use the new curriculum, but education officials say they expect wide adoption nonetheless.

The district has other vacancies — for chief internal auditor and controller, both positions with interim stand-ins. There’s also an opening for Network 15 chief.

And the district is searching for a chief portfolio officer, a new position tasked with supporting the district’s school choice model, managing enrollment for selective and specialized schools and programs like magnet, selective enrollment and vocational schools, and overseeing the expansion of the online school application platform GoCPS.

Another vacancy is chief administrative officer, but the district hasn’t begun the search to fill it.

School planning and strategy chief Elizabeth Kirby left in March after 23 years with the district to take a superintendent job with the Cleveland Heights-University Heights City School District, which serves about 6,500 students in Northeast Ohio. She was replaced by Bogdana Chkoumbova.

Former Chief Officer of Language & Cultural Education Ernesto Matias, who also previously served as principal of Wells High School Wells Community Academy High School on the Northwest Side, left earlier this year for a job at the state board of education, and was replaced by Jorge Macias in May.

In July, the district approved hiring Wally Stock as treasurer and Alfonso Carmona as Network 10 chief. Carmona is a former principal at Healy Elementary School, and most recently worked as superintendent of St. Augustine Preparatory Academy, a Christian school serving 900 students in Milwaukee from pre-K to 12th grade.

Chicago teachers to receive classroom guide to 1919 race riots by fall

2019-07-29T20:27:41+00:00

Chicago schools chief Janice Jackson has spoken often about the need to create more culturally relevant lessons and tailor them to Chicago students. On Monday, she said that the district will offer a teaching guide about the 1919 race riots, a landmark event in city history.

Jackson said that the guide will be available online by September, though teachers are not required to implement it. The program will provide lessons for students across grade levels, describing bloody riots that broke out for seven days across Chicago.

“Given the 100th anniversary, I’m sure teachers will be excited about [the guide],” Jackson said after a commemorative event. “But we will be able to check and see where it’s implemented.”

Earlier this month, the district announced a $135 million curriculum initiative to put high-quality materials in the hands of Chicago’s teachers. Though the teaching guide is separate from that two-year initiative, it takes a small step toward realizing the vision of a more culturally relevant curriculum.

In recent years, public schools have adopted a curriculum that teaches students about police violence under Jon Burge, an Englewood commander and detective who jailed and tortured hundreds of black and brown men in the 1970s and ’80s. The district has also developed a new civics curriculum with the goal of empowering students to get more involved with their communities.

The 1919 race riots were one of the darkest chapters of Chicago’s history. As black and white soldiers returned from World War I and African Americans migrated from the South to northern cities, racial tensions bubbled up in Chicago in 1919.

On July 27, when 17-year-old Eugene Williams and his friends drifted across the divide between the white beach and the black beach at 29th Street, a white man threw a stone at their boat, which hit Williams on the head. The boy drowned, but a white police officer refused to arrest the stone-thrower.

Over the next week, riots broke out across the city, and more than 500 people were injured and 38 killed. Though violence targeted more black people than white people, only three men were convicted of riot-related charges, all of them black.

At a commemoration ceremony Monday at Dunbar Vocational Career Academy High School, Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced the new teaching guide, emphasizing the importance of educating Chicago’s students about the city’s “painful history with racism.” Practices like redlining, police violence, and systematic disinvestment in black and brown neighborhoods stem directly from the violence of 1919, Lightfoot said.

“Learning from our history is possible only by knowing our history, not just as a footnote, not just as a passing mention in somebody else’s story, but knowing it for what it is, as a living breathing part of our daily experience,” Lightfoot said. “If we are ever going to move forward from the events of 1919 and the forces behind it, we have to keep these events alive, and that’s exactly what we’re doing here in Chicago.”

Chicago school board approves new school ratings scale despite complaints and confusion

2019-06-26T23:54:00+00:00

The Chicago Board of Education approved changing its controversial school rating scale Wednesday despite board members’ gripes about the formula and approach for evaluating schools.

District administrators had proposed tweaking Chicago’s school quality rating policy to account for how well elementary schools keep students “on track” and for high schools’ efforts helping students complete post-graduation plans, and to craft rating systems for specialized schools that had lacked them.

At their first meeting since being appointed by Mayor Lori Lightfoot, board members initially looked skeptically at the proposal and questioned the district’s formula and approach to determining school quality, which heavily relies on test scores and attendance.

“This is what you get when you put together a board with expertise,” board President Miguel del Valle said after rounds of questions and to applause from the audience.

The plan failed to garner the five votes needed for it to pass when the board finally voted on the proposal, but then a district lawyer warned that rejecting the proposal would leave the district without a reliable framework for evaluating elementary schools. That would set off a scramble to provide principals with another framework with only a couple months before next school year. Board members appeared visibly confused.

Members complained that they hadn’t known about the need to approve a new formula and felt pressed toward a decision. Still, most disregarded their reservations when weighed against the consequences for the district. The board voted 5 to 1 to approve the policy, known as SQRP.

Member Dwayne Truss voted no, he said, because he felt the district hadn’t engaged teachers and families enough before crafting the policy. Board Vice President Sendhil Revuluri, who said the confusion around the vote placed him in “an awkward position” abstained. But Del Valle, Luisiana Meléndez, Amy Rome, Elizabeth Todd-Breland, and Lucino Sotelo voted yes.

“We can’t change the past,” Sotelo said. “The only thing we can do is [provide guidance] to a better path.”

Schools chief Janice Jackson said it would take at least 18 months to come up with another school rating policy. “We heard loud and clear from the board that there is an interest in investigating and looking at other models,” she said.

Under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the district had been redesigning its school ratings. Before the meeting, Cassie Cresswell of parent group Raise Your Hand protested that the new board would vote so soon on a project built under the previous administration, without broader public input.

“I think it’s kind of shocking that it’s on the agenda,” she said.

Under the Illinois School Code, the CEO at Chicago Public Schools has the power to place schools on probation to address underperformance, and the school board has the authority to decide what guidelines should determine that decision, which is where the ratings come in.

The ratings, which are heavily reliant on test scores, factor strongly into families’ enrollment choices. The district has used them to determine which schools need more support or intervention — like a change of leadership, staff overhaul, closing, or replacement by a school intended to provide students better options.

Critics, including the Chicago Teachers Union, argue that the ratings correlate more with socioeconomic status and race than they do school quality. Board member Amy Rome asked, “Have you considered alternatives to SQRP that don’t pit schools and communities against one another?”

Jackson defended the new policy before the vote.

“Despite the perception of some today,” Jackson said, “CPS is a leader when it comes to school quality.”

She cited districts such as Denver and D.C. that have adopted aspects of Chicago’s approach. But, she said, she was willing to work to update the school rating policy to both be fair and empower school leaders.

Jeff Broom, who oversees assessment and research for the district, called the ratings “a good, credible starting point.” He touted Chicago’s emphasis on student academic growth rather than just performance as a more equitable approach to rating schools, and said the district was ahead of others with its focus on student outcomes.

Chicago’s updated rating formula introduces a new metric to elementary school ratings known as “3-8 On-Track” that factors in attendance and grades in core subjects for students in grades 3 through 8. The indicator, meant to assess whether students are “on track” to succeed in high school, would account for 10% of a school’s rating. The district didn’t provide a breakdown of how the indicator factors in attendance and grades.

Board member Elizabeth Todd-Breland questioned applying those indicators to young children, and not accounting for differentiation in grading practices and instruction. She also criticized the district’s reliance on attendance to calculate school ratings, stressing that many factors outside schools’ control can impact whether a student comes to school or is truant.

The proposed rating formula would also add a new metric to high school ratings — the percent of students who have completed a postsecondary plan.

The portion of students filling out those plans would account for 2.5% of a school’s rating.

Todd-Breland also questioned whether the district could show its “Learn.Plan.Succeed” post-secondary plans were making enough of an impact to include it in school ratings.

Jackson defended the plans.

“Our philosophical approach here is that every graduate, whether they choose to go to college or a career, that they leave with [a plan] in their back pocket prepared,” she said.

Board member Truss questioned whether teachers and parents were consulted enough. Broom cited more than two years of discussions with various groups, although parents weren’t part of that discussion.

Revuluri suggested the district’s rating policy might yield more insights if observations and school visits by district staff were included, and blasted the district’s reliance on the MAP tests from NWEA, a computerized assessment that he said was too quick and broad and nudges teachers to teach to the test.

The Chicago Teachers Union has criticized the district’s rating policy for including test scores and attendance but overlooking factors like class sizes, poverty and housing instability at the district, where highly rated schools tend to be disproportionately concentrated in white and affluent areas.

At a press conference before the school board meeting, union President Jesse Sharkey urged the board to vote no.

“This is a school rating policy which is discriminatory and racist,” he said. “ You should be getting rid of that SQRP and not passing it.”

The board’s vote marks the second major update to the policy in the six years it’s existed, and marked a long first day on the job for the school board members. Wednesday’s meeting, which spanned about six hours, was a lot different than past meetings.

Board members took more time to question district officials about agenda items, and voted on them after public comment rather than retreating behind closed doors and then emerging with a vote. Previous boards often announced votes long after most of the audience had left the chambers.

Chicago schools equity chief promises new decision-making tool this summer

2019-06-06T16:44:06+00:00

The man Chicago Public Schools hired to tackle racial disparities and other inequities in the nation’s third-largest school system promises he’ll produce an “equity framework” this summer.

In nine months on the job as the district’s first chief equity officer, Maurice Swinney hasn’t published any reports or unveiled any big initiatives targeting long-entrenched inequities in Chicago, one of the nation’s most diverse and segregated cities.

The former Tilden High School principal said that his office plans to begin showing its work sometime in the next few months, beginning with the equity framework, a tool for district leaders and educators to guide “how we need to think, behave, organize and do this work to get to equitable outcomes.”

Swinney said that work requires shifts in mindsets for district leaders to better identify and understand how inequities afflict students across the district, and resources to tackle the problems they see. But he declined to outline specifics of his plans and how he expects to accomplish the task as commissioned by schools chief Janice Jackson.

“She’s given a charge to myself and other members of the executive cabinet that this is about equity across Chicago Public Schools, and that we all have to take up this mantle to do this work,” he said. “And so how do other offices and departments interact with me and my team, and then act differently in order to disrupt systems?”

The city’s new mayor, Lori Lightfoot, has also pledged to examine how resources are distributed in schools. Lightfoot’s education transition team recently outlined a vision that moves away from strict student-based budgeting. In it, schools serving high-poverty areas, students in special education, English language learners and students enduring trauma would be first in line for the district’s limited resources.

Since September when Swinney was tapped to lead the district’s equity office, he said his department has kept busy holding listening tours, crunching data that illustrates the disparate achievement and health outcomes among student groups, with a targeted focus on achievement of African-American and Latinx males, which he emphasized as a tenet of the district’s five-year vision plan.

Recently, he said, his team worked with the district’s budget team to push for $31 million in “equity grants” to soften budget cuts at scores of schools with low or declining enrollment, helping preserve some educators’ jobs.

“When you cut positions you start to cut relationships,” Swinney said.

His comments came Wednesday in an interview with Chalkbeat after a panel discussion at Loyola University Chicago hosted by the nonprofit Friends of the Children about tackling the cycle of intergenerational poverty, violence and trauma that Chicago students, families and educators wrestle with, particularly in some of the city’s most distressed, segregated and disinvested neighborhoods.

Swinney said the conversation around how schools can help youth dealing with trauma has to start with acknowledging that “traditional education is built on racist structures.”

“And that there is institutional and structural racism that has caused what young people are experiencing in their communities and in their families,” he said.

Also on the panel were Colleen Cicchetti, executive director of the Center for Childhood Resilience at Lurie Children’s Hospital, which trains local teachers on how to identify and support students who have endured trauma, and Eddie Bocanegra, a violence intervention expert. The talk was moderated by Bryan Samuels, executive director of Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago.

Panelists stressed that childhood trauma has causes other than gun violence, from physical and sexual abuse to the loss of a loved one to the challenges of living in poverty and more. They also emphasized the importance of providing mental health professionals in schools and training teachers to identify and address trauma in students, investing in community mental health resources, and mentoring.

Lori Lightfoot makes it official: She’s keeping Janice Jackson as Chicago schools chief

2019-05-21T23:12:28+00:00

Following weeks of speculation about how she’d fill senior leadership roles, Chicago’s new mayor Lori Lightfoot said Tuesday that she’ll retain homegrown schools chief Janice Jackson in the top job at Chicago Public Schools.

That decision was largely expected. Lightfoot said during the campaign that she recognized the need for stability atop schools. Until previous Mayor Rahm Emanuel named Jackson schools interim chief in December 2017 — she became permanent a month later — Chicago schools had been overseen by a seven schools chiefs in a span of five years. One left under a cloud of an ethics scandal; another ended up in prison.

Five days after the election, Lightfoot told the Chicago Sun-Times that she “came away very impressed” in an early meeting with Jackson.

“She gets tremendous praise from people all over. I was at an event and a principal came up to me … as if on cue, she started talking about Janice Jackson. How great she was. Janice was walking toward us. I said, ‘Turn around and tell her yourself.’ That’s the kind of praise she gets at every level in the school system.”

Since the Feb. 26 general election put Lightfoot in a runoff, Jackson’s supporters have appeared at board of education meetings to stump for her in public.

“We’re going to keep our CEO,” said Darlene Obanner-Suttle, a Local School Council member at Earle Stem Elementary School in West Englewood, at a meeting the day after the runoff. “We don’t care about the elected school board.”

In Jackson’s first year as CEO, she’s wrestled with continued enrollment declines and revelations of a student sex abuse crisis and troubles in a special education program that violated students rights. She has also presided over another round of school closings, this time four high schools being phased out to make way for a new school in Englewood.

But she’s also won praise from educators and parents for bringing more stability to the system. She has delivered school budgets earlier, steered more money and programs to schools that sorely need them to attract new students, and released a five-year vision that articulates a central path toward improvement. One part of that is a massive curriculum initiative that will go before the school board on Wednesday.

One week before Chicago mayoral election, schools chief outlines five-year vision

2019-03-26T20:23:17+00:00

Chicago school leaders unveiled their five-year vision for the district on Tuesday with a focus on continuing academic gains and financial stability, raising the achievement of black and Latino males, and restoring the public’s trust in Chicago Public Schools.

Schools CEO Janice Jackson and Chief Academic Officer LaTanya McDade presented the plan Tuesday morning at Bronzeville Classical Elementary School, outlining goals at the school district through the year 2024, with a focus on three core commitments: “academic progress, financial stability and integrity.”

The vision plan follows the release of school-level budgets for next year that provide underenrolled schools with more support, and district investments in academic programs at neighborhood schools, both measures Jackson and McDade said align with the district’s recent emphasis on equity.

“This is one of the greatest school district turnaround stories in the history of our nation,” McDade said, citing academic growth in the past decade. “But we know there are times when our students are not growing at the same rate or achieving the same outcomes.”

Jackson later echoed McDade’s point, emphasizing, “all of our work is grounded in equity.”

“We’re excited and we’re proud of the progress the district has made, but we will not realize our collective goals as a city unless we make sure the most vulnerable students in our city are meeting the same goals,” she said. “Because if you only look at the progress and look at the data, it can mask troubling signs and troubling disparities that lie beneath.”

Here are some goals from the district’s five-year vision:

Expand pre-kindergarten to all 4-year-olds.
Increase seats for academic programs like the International Baccalaureate and STEM (science, technology, engineering and math).
Increase by 50 percent the percent of incoming kindergarten students meeting readiness benchmarks.
Increase by 70 percent the number of students who meet or exceed national reading and math attainment on the NWEA test.
Boost graduation rates to 90 percent.
Ensure at least 60 percent of students graduate with an early college or career credential.
Secure full state education funding
Review funding models and seek ways to improve equity and support neglected populations.

Jackson emphasized that more engagement and transparency was vital to restoring public trust in the school district, which had a history of scandals even before reports last year of mishandled student sexual abuse cases and violations of the rights of students with disabilities. The district, according to the plan, wants to increase the number of parents who feel that the district is on the right track, that their child has access to a quality education, and who report having many different ways to get involved at their child’s school.

Here are two copies of Chicago Public Schools’ five-year strategic plan, one in English and another in Spanish:

Here’s the Spanish version.

These 32 Chicago schools to split $32 million for new STEM, arts, and International Baccalaureate programs

2019-03-19T17:00:00+00:00

In an effort to make its neighborhood and magnet schools more attractive, Chicago will spend $32 million to expand sought-after programs such as International Baccalaureate and dual-language to 32 more campuses across the city.

The plan, announced today by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and schools chief Janice Jackson, is billed as the largest programmatic expansion in the district’s history and comes at a time of intense scrutiny over what Chicago is doing to stem the tide of declining K-12 enrollment citywide.

When the competitive application program was announced last fall, 102 principals sent the district letters of intent to apply for funds. The district subsequently invited 58 of them to submit full proposals, eventually narrowing the list down to 32 schools, according to school board reports from Jackson.

The school district has repeatedly refused Chalkbeat requests for a complete list of schools that applied.

You can find the full list of 32 awardees below.

Of the seven high schools receiving funds, six are district-run neighborhood schools that have struggled to compete with the district’s popular selective-enrollment high schools.

Chicago will add programs focusing on science, technology, engineering, and math — some also with arts — to 11 schools. It will expand the International Baccalaureate curriculum to seven schools, to bring the program to a total of 62 campuses citywide. The rigorous IB curriculum — originally designed for the children of British diplomats — has expanded more quickly here than in any other school district in North America.

The $32 million expansion will also build out dual-language programs at four schools. A small group of schools will also receive world language and personalized learning programs that lean on computer-assisted instruction. The district will add one new gifted program, starting with kindergarten, at McPherson Elementary in Ravenswood.

Chicago also released an updated version of its Annual Regional Analysis, an inventory report compiled with school-choice group Kids First that is meant to both guide district decision-making and arm school communities with information to discuss and advocate for resources.

The report, which debuted last year, divides the school district into 16 “planning regions” showing where schools are, what programs they offer, how they are performing, and how people choose among available options. At community meetings held last year about the district’s Annual Regional Analysis, educators and parents pushed for the school district to help neglected open-enrollment schools raise their profile with programmatic investments and marketing support.

Here’s a full list of schools and new programs:

Addams Elementary School (Personalized Learning)
Belmont-Cragin Elementary School (Magnet – Fine & Performing Arts)
Cameron Elementary School (Magnet Cluster – Fine & Performing Arts)
Chase Elementary School (STEAM)
Chicago Military Academy at Bronzeville (Early College STEM)
Michele Clark Magnet High School (IB – MYP)
Collins Academy High School (Magnet Cluster – Fine & Performing Arts) (Nhood)
Columbia Explorers Elementary School (STEM)
Cuffe Elementary School (STEM)
Earhart Elementary School (STEAM)
Eberhart Elementary School (Dual Language)
Everett Elementary School (STEM)
Evergreen Academy (STEAM)
Fairfield Elementary School (IB – MYP)
Faraday Elementary School (IB – PYP)
Goethe Elementary School (Dual Language)
Hawthorne Elementary School (Personalized Learning)
Joplin Elementary School (Magnet Cluster – World Language)
Josephine Locke Elementary School (IB – PYP)
McPherson Elementary School (Gifted & IB-PYP)
Moos Elementary School (IB – PYP)
Peck Elementary School (STEM)
Perez Elementary School (World Language Academy – Mandarin & Spanish)
Peterson Elementary School (STEAM)
Portage Park Elementary School (Magnet Cluster – Fine & Performing Arts)
Roosevelt High School (Dual Language)
Salazar Elementary School (Dual Language)
Senn High School (IB – CP)
Shoop Elementary School (STEM)
Steinmetz High School (STEAM)
Till Elementary School (Magnet Cluster – Fine & Performing Arts)
Wells High School (Magnet Cluster – Fine & Performing Arts)

Editor’s note: This story was updated to reflect that 102 principals submitted letters of intent and 58 schools were invited to move forward with the process.

Educators want to hear more from mayoral candidates on elected school board, under-enrollment

2019-03-07T22:47:37+00:00

How would Chicago shift from mayoral control to an elected school board and how would the city’s next mayor protect the process from special interests?

Questions about district governance topped the list of what Chalkbeat readers want to ask Toni Preckwinkle and Lori Lightfoot, the two women who are campaigning hard to be the city’s next mayor and de facto head of schools.

More than 140 readers — 60 percent of whom identified as educators or as working in a school-related field — answered an informal Chalkbeat poll that solicited reader questions for the two candidates headed to the runoff.

Chicagoans will vote in a municipal runoff on April 2.

Both Preckwinkle, who is president of the Cook County Board of Commissioners, and Lightfoot, a former federal prosecutor, have said they’d support shifting the composition of the city’s school board from appointed officials to elected ones.

The two candidates have also voiced similar responses to questions about charter moratoriums as the district faces steep enrollment declines.

They have offered differing responses to the prevailing question of whether to retain the city’s current schools chief, Janice Jackson. Preckwinkle has said she’d keep Jackson; Lightfoot said she’d wait and see.

But neither Preckwinkle nor Lightfoot has offered too many details about how they’d grapple with some of Chicago schools’ most intransigent problems, including ones that readers told Chalkbeat they care deeply about. Where will they find more funding to help bolster shrinking neighborhood schools? Will they take a political risk and outline how they’d conquer a threatening deficit?

Readers who took Chalkbeat’s poll also said they wanted to hear more about how each candidate would more equitably distribute money to schools on the South and West sides of Chicago; whether the next mayor would prioritize class size reductions and additional staffing; and how they’d approach dealing with the union on issues such as teacher benefits and pensions.

Sixty-nine percent of readers who took the anonymous five-question poll said they were undecided between the two candidates. Of those who’d decided, 25 percent said they would vote for Lightfoot and 5.7 percent would vote for Preckwinkle.

On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being “not very important” and 5 being “very important,” 67 percent of respondents ranked education policy at the top, a very important consideration when casting a ballot. Thirty percent ranked it a 4.

Multiple readers also asked how Preckwinkle, who is backed by the teachers’ union, would balance public and union interests in teacher contract negotiations. The teachers union contract is set to expire this summer and contract bargaining is underway.

Below are some other questions Chalkbeat readers said they wanted to ask the candidates.

District governance

How will you keep special interests out of an elected school board?

Will you keep Janice Jackson as schools leader?

Do you plan to retain current Chicago Public Schools management?

Will you spend time listening to current CPS employees before launching new initiatives?

How will better structures and transparency be built into CPS?

Fiscal stability

Will you keep the student-based budgeting model or consider other models that consider community resource needs?

How do you plan to both honor the current pensions but support Chicago becoming more fiscally stable?

Staffing

How will the next mayor work to ensure adequate, equitable funding for schools, including services like nurses and counselors, special education, and money for capital improvements and repairs?

Underenrollment

What’s the plan to stop enrollment loss and try to grow the overall student body?

What do you plan to do about the ever-shrinking enrollment of CPS schools? Will you consider closing schools if there is under a certain number of students in that school?

Equity

Our public schools are segregated; more specifically, selective-enrollment schools are segregated racially, socioeconomically, and academically. How can you fix these disparities?

What can we expect from you regarding English as a Second Language and special education students? These students tend to be high risk since they often fall into the over-hype of university/college with below-standard preparation, or they fall through the cracks of public education.

What non-education policies will you prioritize to ensure that all students can be successful at school (e.g., housing, food security, public transportation, etc.)?

After visiting a Chicago high school, Bill Gates says it’s a model for his current education vision

2019-03-06T18:48:01+00:00

When Bill Gates announced in 2017 that his foundation would begin investing in “networks” of schools, he said he wanted to replicate the success of a particular Chicago organization.

On Tuesday, Gates in a blog post heaped fresh praise on Chicago’s Network for College Success, a group housed at the University of Chicago that works with 17 Chicago high schools. Gates also posted video of his visit to North-Grand High School in Humboldt Park, a school he says uses student data to keep students on track for graduation with the network’s help.

“The students I met at North-Grand during my visit liked the fact that there was no mystery about their standing in their classes,” Gates wrote. “I hope more schools around the country can learn from this success.”

Gates was calling attention to the school’s use of the “Freshmen On-Track” metric, which emerged from another University of Chicago group, its influential Consortium on School Research, and eventually became a citywide measure of school success. Writer Emily Krone Phillips described Harper High Principal Elizabeth Dozier’s first attempts to improve that data point in her book “The Make-or-Break Year: Solving the Dropout Crisis One Ninth Grader at a Time”:

She created a community of freshman teachers who met weekly to review data on each student’s grades, attendance, and discipline patterns. The group strategized about ways to support and motivate students academically and to provide additional help for those whose struggles had nothing to do with academics. To make the work feel more tangible, she created a board with every student’s name on it and moved the student on- or off-track throughout the year. The team celebrated every small victory — a kid who went from failing to passing math; a chronic truant who started showing up regularly.

Gates attributes Chicago’s increasing graduation rates and gains on standardized tests to that focus on data. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has already begun giving money to organizations that convene schools to help them act on that information, awarding an $11.7 million grant to the Network for College Success and $92 million overall to networks last year. (The Gates Foundation is a supporter of Chalkbeat.)

Of course, there are a variety of potential explanations for Chicago’s academic improvements, some of which Gates mentions, including longer school days, more principal autonomy and training, and demographic changes. His post doesn’t acknowledge a persistent problem for the district: longstanding gaps in test scores between students of different races. And while graduation rates citywide have shot up 20 points, from 57 percent in 2011 to slightly over 78 percent last spring, stubborn gaps by race remain there too, though they closed slightly this past year.

At North-Grand, a 990-student school that is predominantly Latino, the 2018 graduation rate was 72 percent, up from 69 percent from 2011. The percentage of freshmen on track to graduate last spring was 92.8 percent, outpacing the citywide average of 89.4 percent.

The post comes at a crucial time for Chicago schools, with a new mayor about to be elected and current schools chief Janice Jackson’s fate uncertain as a result. Jackson herself touted the district’s fast-growing graduation rate in a Chicago Sun-Times op-ed on Monday, and former Chicago schools chief Arne Duncan used the city’s grad rates and test-score growth to argue in the Sun-Times that the next mayor should continue to appoint the school board.

Mayoral candidate Lori Lightfoot still undecided about schools chief Janice Jackson

2019-03-05T18:46:45+00:00

A few days after mayoral candidate Toni Preckwinkle said she would retain Chicago’s schools chief if elected, opponent Lori Lightfoot said she prefers to keep her options open.

After securing the most votes out of 14 contenders in the Feb. 26 municipal elections, Preckwinkle and Lightfoot will face each other in a citywide runoff on April 2.

In a statement emailed to Chalkbeat, Lightfoot emphasized the importance of maintaining stability at the district and noted, “there have been five CEOs in the last seven years, which is a problem,” but stopping short of saying the solution was keeping Janice Jackson, who has led Chicago schools for a little over a year.

“If I am fortunate enough to become the next mayor, I will sit down with her and her team and in particular discuss some issues about which I have concerns,” Lightfoot said. “For now, we will continue to make the case to voters about the need for change.”

Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson.

Jackson, 41, grew up in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood on the South Side, and has two children at the school district. The Bronzeville resident is the first schools chief since 1995 to have been a teacher in the district, and enjoys broad support among principals and educators. She also has weathered significant criticism of the district’s handling of sexual abuse complaints and special education.

Lightfoot’s opponent Preckwinkle pledged Friday to retain Jackson, stressing the importance of stable leadership at the district and praising the schools chief. Earlier last week, a parade of South Side residents and community leaders took to the podium at the board of education’s monthly to demand that Jackson keep her job, whoever wins the mayor’s race.

Jackson backers also flocked to Twitter to declare support for the schools chief.

Honestly, that will decide how I vote. I’m with the candidate that retains Jackson and McDade.
— Anne Gray (@AnneEHG) February 28, 2019

During the mayoral race, all of the 14 candidates declined to say whether they’d retain Jackson as schools chief, with the exception of Gery Chico, who said yes, and Amara Enyia, who said no.

Janice Jackson supporters stump for Chicago schools chief as changes loom at City Hall

2019-02-27T23:23:24+00:00

One day after a historic election propelled two black women into a runoff for Chicago mayor, the civic conversation quickly turned to how Lori Lightfoot and Toni Preckwinkle each plan to distinguish herself on school policy — and whether either would keep homegrown schools chief Janice Jackson in the district’s top seat.

Anticipating that decision, several Jackson supporters seized Wednesday’s school board meeting as a platform to stump for the schools chief.

Whoever wins the April 2 mayoral runoff election between Lightfoot and Preckwinkle will have the power to keep or replace Jackson. Both candidates have declined to say whether or not they would retain her. Jackson, a product of Chicago Public Schools who has emphasized transparency and equity, enjoys broad support among principals and educators.

That contrasts with her predecessor, a bureaucrat with no classroom experience. Forrest Claypool stepped down in December 2017 in an ethics scandal.

The dozen people who spoke at the school board meeting bore that out. Ald. Carrie Austin of the 34th Ward praised Jackson as a role model for students in the district — a homegrown leader “who started at the bottom and has worked her way to the top.”

“Make sure that you are looking at the depth of the CEO we have,” Austin told the board.

A parade of Jackson supporters followed.

A throng of South Side community members and leaders spoke in support of Janice Jackson at the Feb. 27 school board meeting.

“We’re going to keep our CEO,” said Darlene Obanner-Suttle, a Local School Council member at Earle Stem Elementary School in West Englewood. “We don’t care about the elected school board.”

Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson and Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced the district’s $1 billion capital plan at Lázaro Cardenas Elementary School in Little Village in July.

Ebony Scott, Chicago site director of the Family Independence Initiative, a national anti-poverty organization, joined by members of Metropolitan Family Services, read from a proclamation declaring support for Jackson. Scott said Jackson was handed a tough job but approached it with “grace and style,” and possesses the compassion and assertiveness to get things done.

“You have been strategically positioned for purpose,” she read, addressing Jackson. “You understand the challenges our students face with limitations of economic barriers.”

Of course, when she takes over in the spring, the new mayor will face several other pressing education issues and tough decisions, from how to stem continuing enrollment drops and shrinking schools, to how to protect students amid a sexual assault crisis, to how to distribute limited funding across a vast district with many competing needs and a deep history of racial inequity.

Educators aren’t waiting until the new mayor is sworn in this May to press for answers.

CTU President Jesse Sharkey speaks to reporters outside Chicago Public Schools headquarters on Feb. 27.

Before the board meeting, the Chicago Teachers Union publicly called on the district to address overcrowding and inadequate resources at neighborhood schools in neglected parts of the city. Union President Jesse Sharkey called on both Lightfoot and Preckwinkle, whom his union endorsed, to add substance to their education plans and explain how they will make their promises come true.

“The top two vote getters are people who have lifted up public education and support a number of our key policies,” Sharkey said. “That said … the case to our membership has to be about what are the concrete things we’re actually going to see.”

For example, Sharkey said he was happy to hear Preckwinkle’s stance against closing schools, but he wants to hear her views on other critical issue facing the district.

For instance, “can we get a nurse in every school — every day,” he said.

Will the next mayor address these questions alongside Jackson or another schools chief? That’s impossible to say.

But whatever the outcome, the multi-year contract Jackson signed after she was promoted to her post last year comes with certain protections, courtesy of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel: a six-month guarantee of her $260,000 salary and health benefits if she’s fired without cause before June 2021.

It’s called a golden parachute.

Use the tool below to compare Preckwinkle and Lightfoot’s answers to our January voters guide questionnaire.

Are Chicago schools too focused on a ‘college or bust’ culture? Some mayoral hopefuls think so.

2019-02-03T01:19:58+00:00

Is Chicago’s “college or bust” culture undermining its neighborhood schools? At a forum on Saturday, several mayoral candidates pledged that, if elected, they would re-evaluate the selective enrollment, or test-in, model and steer more resources toward neighborhood schools and vocational programs.

Lori Lightfoot, a lawyer and former federal prosecutor, was among those pledging to “reorient” the Chicago school district’s approach. “The focus is so much on ‘college or bust’ and selective enrollment that we’ve gotten away from the core mission of making sure we have good quality schools everywhere,” she said.

An alliance of nearly 50 women’s groups sponsored Saturday’s forum, held at the Chicago Temple in the Loop and attended by 11 of the 15 mayoral candidates. Education was the first subject area addressed, but the event also covered economic development, crime, and gender equality. Candidates were divided into two groups for the interviews and not every candidate was asked every question.

Of the front-runners, only Bill Daley, the former U.S. commerce secretary and former Obama chief of staff, did not attend.

In the last few weeks of the contentious mayoral race, the topic of building up Chicago’s neighborhood schools has become a familiar theme. Neighborhood schools must accept any child living in their attendance boundary.

A new capacity report shows that 233 of the district’s schools are underutilized, according to a district formula; most of the schools on that list are open-enrollment schools.

In contrast, Chicago’s selective enrollment, or test-in, schools are among the top-rated and most in-demand programs. Federal civil rights data show that, as a whole, they tend to enroll more white students and, at the high school level, offer more AP and college-preparation courses than their neighborhood counterparts.

In addition, critics say, the district’s focus on test-in schools has been at the expense of neighborhood programs.

Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza said she’d boost neighborhood schools by explaining her 50NEW program, which would turn 50 under-utilized campuses into community centers, complete with robust after-school programs and job training classes for parents at night. She also pledged to “close the achievement gap by 50 percent.”

Mendoza said she’d pay for her initiative with extra dollars wrung from the state’s revamped education funding formula that netted hundreds of millions more for Chicago’s schools this year.

“We have stopped magnetizing our high schools,” said Paul Vallas, a former Chicago budget director and schools chief who has also led school districts in New Orleans, Philadelphia, and Bridgeport, Connecticut. “We need to put programs in our neighborhood high schools to make them attractive.”

The youngest candidate in the race, 30-year-old Chicago Public Schools graduate John Kozlar, took the most extreme position, saying he’d abolish the K-12 system and implement a K-10 system that would ask students to choose, after their sophomore year, a career track or a college track.

“We aren’t teaching our students about the trades. We’re telling them they have to go to college,” he said. “That’s a 20th century way of thinking.”

Gery Chico, a lawyer who worked in the Richard M. Daley administration and later served as Chicago school board president and state school superintendent, said he’d expand both vocational education and the academically rigorous International Baccalaureate program from “50 schools to 150 schools.” Several neighborhood schools offer IB tracks in addition to vocational programming to give students options; the district is currently offering its first request-for-proposals for schools that want to add IB and other enrollment-boosting curricula.

Chicago’s mayoral race is still largely unpredictable. Several of those considered front-runners have raised large sums of money but recent polls show that significant percentages of Chicago voters remain undecided.

Until recently, all but one of the candidates for Chicago mayor have skirted the question of whether they’d retain schools chief Janice Jackson if they are elected. Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, who is among the front-runners and is backed by the Chicago Teachers Union, took a moment Saturday to lavish praise on the homegrown schools chief and touted the need for “stability” in the city.

“I have confidence in Janice Jackson,” she said, in response to a question that asked two candidates to evaluate the district’s handling of a sexual abuse scandal that reveals widespread policy lapses that date back decades. “She’s done a great job leading our public schools.”

In a recent Chalkbeat Chicago candidate questionnaire, only one, policy consultant Amara Enyia, answered “no” to the question of whether they’d retain the schools chief.

Chicago schools will be open Tuesday, closed Wednesday

2019-01-29T04:51:44+00:00

After citywide alerts about subzero temperatures, Chicago Public Schools announced that schools will remain open on Tuesday and close on Wednesday.

“Student safety is our top priority and the temperatures are expected to drop to extreme and dangerous levels on Wednesday, which could present a hazard for students,” said district CEO Janice Jackson.

Chicago temperatures are expected to plunge well below zero starting Tuesday evening. All after-school activities are canceled Tuesday.

Schools will close Wednesday; the district directed families struggling with adequate heat at home to Park District warming centers. A spokeswoman said the school district will notify parents by Wednesday afternoon about whether schools will open Thursday.

Friday is a scheduled in-service day for teachers and a non-attendance day for students, so families of some 361,000 students potentially could be without child care for the rest of the week.

The district’s announcement comes after seven inches of snow delayed school buses, and left families and educators battling snowdrifts and unplowed roads to deliver their children and get to work.

Charter networks, including Noble, Acero, and CICS, said they would all follow Chicago Public Schools’ lead for closing schools due to bad weather.

During brutal weather weeks, Chicago schools face a quandary: call off classes and force the majority low-income population they serve to scramble for child care, or tough it out amid snow and ice, frigid temperatures, and poor driving conditions that jeopardize safety of educators and families.

The district said it will also likely add another instructional day to the end of the year to make up for missed classroom time.

In November, the first large snowstorm of the school year caused power outages at about 20 schools in Chicago, including one elementary school where students had to be moved to another building.

Who’s best for Chicago schools? A Chalkbeat voter guide to the 2019 mayor’s race

2019-01-28T22:44:00+00:00

Chicago’s next mayor faces many critical decisions regarding Chicago Public Schools, from charter expansion to schools chief Janice Jackson’s job status. How to distinguish the many candidates from one another and understand their views?

To help voters, Chalkbeat Chicago compiled this guide culling candidates’ responses to education-related questions.

No surprise that the would-be mayors split most clearly on whether Chicago should elect its school board members or whether the mayor should continue to appoint them. All of the candidates promised they wouldn’t open new charter schools, except Bill Daley and Paul Vallas, who said “maybe.” All but two of the candidates refused to say whether or not they would keep Jackson as schools chief, signaling an uncertain fate for the former principal and teacher who is entering her second year on the job. Only Amara Enyia and Gery Chico gave a specific response; Enyia said no and Chico said yes. (To read why, look up their full responses below.)

Where candidates stand on three big education issues

Candidate	How should the school board be selected?	Would you open new charter schools?	Would you retain CEO Janice Jackson?
Gery Chico	Partially appointed, partially selected by school councils	No	Yes
Bill Daley	Partially appointed, partially selected by school councils	Maybe	Prefer not to say
Bob Fioretti	Partially elected, partially appointed	No	Undecided
LaShawn K Ford	Fully elected	No	Undecided
Jerry Joyce	Partially elected, partially appointed	No	Undecided
Lori Lightfoot	Fully elected	No	Prefer not to say
Susana Mendoza	Partially elected, partially appointed	No	Prefer not to say
Toni Preckwinkle	Fully elected	No	Undecided
Paul Vallas	Partially elected, partially appointed	Maybe	Undecided
Willie Wilson	Fully elected	No	Undecided
No Response
Neal Sáles-Griffin	No Response
John Kozlar	No Response
Garry McCarthy	No Response

We also quizzed candidates on some more nuanced questions: Would they close more schools and if not, how would they handle the hundreds of under-utilized campuses?

And in a still segregated city with a history of racial inequity, how would the next mayor boost achievement of black and brown students?

Also, would they continue Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s rollout of universal pre-K, a popular at initiative that promises educational payoffs but carries a hefty price tag?

Early voting starts Jan. 29. The general election is Feb. 26. If no candidate receives a majority of the votes, the top two candidates will enter a runoff election that takes place April 2.

Use the tool below to peruse where candidates stand on these issues and more. Scroll down to see every candidate’s response, or click on individual names to narrow the field.

Chicago schools chief Janice Jackson on her first year: ‘I don’t make decisions based on fear’

2018-12-21T20:40:12+00:00

One chilly December evening, Janice Jackson strode purposefully into her corner office at Chicago Public Schools’ downtown headquarters, sat down at a conference table, and reflected with Chalkbeat Chicago on her eventful first year running the nation’s third largest school district.

There are two words that Jackson repeated often this year — transparency and equity — and they came up often in this conversation, too.

That translated to her releasing a comprehensive inventory of the city’s school choices — which prompted some difficult conversations about supply and demand across the district. She also created an office of equity to help confront test scores and graduation rates that show black and brown students lagging behind their white and Asian peers.

She’s wrestled with revelations of a student sex abuse crisis, a special education program that violated students rights, and unpopular decisions to shutter more schools in black communities still reeling from 2013’s mass closings.

But if one thing is clear from Year 1, Jackson’s resolve in tackling problems showed she doesn’t buckle under controversy, harsh words from critics, or fear of bad optics.

“Your natural personality says a lot about how you do stuff, and this is the honest-to-god truth — I am a fearless person,” she said. “I only fear God, that’s just how I roll. I believe that you have to make good decisions, you have to do what’s right, but I do not lead by fear, and I don’t make decisions based on fear.”

The realization of a dream — and a tough job

Jackson, 41, grew up in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood on the South Side, and has two children attending Chicago Public Schools. She got her start teaching at South Shore High School, and is the first schools chief to have taught at the district since 1995. Her ascent to schools chief followed her predecessor Forrest Claypool’s sudden departure under a cloud of scandal, but she wasn’t surprised last December when the mayor appointed her as interim CEO or in January when she shed the interim tag.

Jackson was plucked from the principal ranks, promoted to network chief and then named chief academic officer in 2015 with the understanding that she was being groomed to lead the district, her professional dream since early in her teaching career at Chicago schools.

“I knew being a principal would be extremely important, but if I really wanted to change some of the systemic things I think needed to be improved at CPS, that the role of CEO made the most sense,” she said.

But running a large, troubled urban school district — even one with climbing test scores and graduation rates — meant that she had to confront a pervasive, deep-seated public mistrust of district leadership in addition to ongoing challenges such as declining enrollment and disparities in academic achievement along race and class lines.

Jackson said she stepped into Year 1 with a vision of transforming Chicago Public Schools into a more equitable place for students.

Before those initiatives, Jackson tackled some low-profile but critical issues. In January, she made sure principals got their budgets earlier, to provide more certainty about funding. She directed more resources to schools with enrollment declines.

She also inherited some serious troubles. The Illinois State Board of Education imposed a monitor over the district’s special education program after finding the district had delayed and denied services to students with disabilities. Jackson added dozens of special ed positions, and pledged more resources for the program.

“I think that is a space where we have some room to grow,” she said.

In May, the Chicago Tribune published the first in a series revealing the district’s mishandling of sexual abuse cases over a decade.

“I was just sick to my stomach, but I also saw it as an opportunity to change the culture at CPS,” Jackson said. “I think we could easily come up with a plan to catch the bad guys, and CPS did a good job catching the perpetrators — but that’s not the only problem.”

Jackson stands by the district’s responses, from conducting more stringent background checks to creating an Office of Student Protections and Title IX, a department tasked with improving how the district handles allegations of abuse, harassment and discrimination, whether adult on student or student on student.

“We’re trying to raise a new generation of kids who understand appropriate boundaries, appropriate relationships, things you’re supposed to say — all of those I count as things that would not have happened had that story not exposed some of the things happening at the district,” Jackson said.

This year, Jackson unveiled an initiative to expand popular academic programs to neighborhood schools via an application process for principals. The idea is to raise the profile of neighborhood schools, which have been losing students — and funds — given the district’s per-pupil school funding approach.

Jackson also hired the district’s first equity officer.

That’s noteworthy, said Elizabeth Todd-Breland, a history professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago who studies education and said Jackson has spoken publicly about equity more than recent Chicago school chiefs. “But,” Todd-Breland said, “I think it still remains to be seen what a focus on equity in CPS looks like in practice.”

School closings backlash, and a look forward

Some of the strongest backlash against the homegrown schools chief has come from critics of her plans to close four Englewood high schools and replace them with a new $85 million campus and to close a high-performing South Side elementary school to make way for a new high school.

The Englewood schools were underenrolled and underperforming, according to the district, which shuttered 50 schools in 2013 under the same reasoning.

National Teachers Academy, meanwhile, was slated to lose its building and be converted into a high school until a court halted the plans. The ruling dealt Jackson one of the biggest setbacks of her tenure. It was likely the first court-ordered freeze of a school-closing measure in Chicago.

Jackson, who lives in the predominantly black Bronzeville neighborhood on the South Side, said she’s gotten an earful from community members, even during trips to the grocery store, about her support for school closings in Englewood and at National Teachers Academy. But she insists that she backed the school closings to bring high-quality high schools and opportunities to areas needing more options.

Looking toward Year 2, Jackson said she is focused on “clearly articulating what equity means and what that framework means for the district.” That means a public statement that outlines concrete goals related to equity that addresses things like school funding, student achievement, procurement and workforce diversity. Jackson said she plans to propose ways to improve access to quality schools and programs, and to direct resources where they are most needed, such as placing case managers and social workers in high-needs schools.

In November, Jackson was chosen to co-chair an advisory group formed by Governor-elect J.B. Pritzker to build and support his education agenda over the next four years.

But it’s uncertain whether Jackson will still be schools chief next year once the city elects a new mayor, who will wield the power to replace both the school board and Jackson.

Nate Pietrini thinks Jackson should keep her job, whoever wins the election.

He’s a former district principal, co-host of education podcast “The Ed Couple,” and executive director of High Jump Chicago, who said Jackson brings much-needed positivity to the job for educators, school leaders, students and community members alike.

“She seems to be everywhere sharing the good news about CPS,” he said, “and trying to get people to feel good about the work they do.” He credits her for a spring listening tour across the city that he said helped to rebuild fractured public trust.

But he said Jackson could be clearer about plans for opening and closing schools.

Still, he said, “I hope the new mayor keeps her on board.”

Earlier in December, panelists at a Chalkbeat event about the new mayor and future of Chicago schools were split on whether Jackson should keep her job. Elizabeth Swanson of the Joyce Foundation said Jackson’s experience on the ground in school communities helps her connect with and inspire educators, and said she’s proven capable of running the district in her sole year in charge. Community organizer Jitu Brown took the opposite view and said situations like the National Teachers Academy fracas gave him pause.

But sitting in her corner office at 42 W. Madison Ave. earlier this month, Jackson didn’t mince words about her prospects.

“I expect to be in this office this time next year,” she said.

Here’s what happened in Chicago public education this year

2018-12-21T20:19:21+00:00

Since Chalkbeat Chicago launched in June, we have published 200 stories about public education in the city. We’ve profiled programs, policies, and people, from a detailed analysis of the increasingly popular International Baccalaureate curriculum to the very personal story of a 16-year-old boy struggling to read. Looking back on it all, these are the 14 storylines that stood out this year — stories that we’ll be watching in 2019.

1. Chicago schools continued to show signs of improvement.

Graduation rates at Chicago schools continued to rise this past school year, reaching what district officials described as a record high, and more students from the district than ever before enrolled in college. Meanwhile, math scores trended up slightly on a national test called the NWEA that city students take each year, evidence that the district’s efforts to boost math skills are paying off, while reading scores were flat year over year.

Still, on each of these metrics, stubborn gaps by race persisted, with black and Latino students falling behind their white and Asian peers. CEO Janice Jackson has said that addressing these disparities is one of the top priorities for the district’s new chief equity officer, a first-of-its-kind position.

2. Enrollment continued to fall.

For the 16th straight year, enrollment in Chicago’s public schools fell, this time by about 10,000 students, according to a count taken on the 20th day of school. Size matters, because the number of students determines how many critical state dollars a district receives. At the school level, per-student funding determines how many teachers a principal can hire, whether or not there are librarians and arts teachers, and how many programs are offered.

3. There was stability in the CEO’s office, but leadership changes reverberated through City Hall and Springfield.

After a revolving door of school superintendents across the past decade, homegrown schools chief Janice Jackson officially assumed the CEO job in January, achieving what she described as a longtime professional dream.

Under her watch, the district unveiled a surprise $1 billion capital plan to fund long-awaited facility upgrades, technology, and new schools in Belmont-Cragin and on the Near West Side.

But beyond the schools chief office were some landscape-shifting leadership changes, chiefly Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s decision to not seek reelection — a decision that will decidedly impact schools. There was also the victory of billionaire businessman J.B. Pritzker in the Illinois gubernatorial election. Here’s how candidate Pritzker described his education agenda in an October interview with Chalkbeat Chicago and WBEZ.

Teachers picket in front of Chicago Public Schools headquarters on the second day of the Acero teachers strike.

4. The powerful teachers union experienced a big loss, followed by a big win.

In June, the Supreme Court ruled in Janus v. AFSCME that labor unions could no longer collect fees from employees on whose behalf they negotiate, but who haven’t joined the union as full members. It was a blow to groups like the Chicago Teachers Union, and many are still struggling to gauge the impact on their membership, finances, and, ultimately, their political muscle.

But earlier this month, an opportunity cropped up: The nation’s first-ever strike of charter teachers, when some 500 unionized teachers at Acero charter schools in Chicago walked off the job, reverberated across the country. It grabbed the attention of the broader education community that may have regarded charters as on the fringes of their interests — until now.

5. Attempts to reform the special education system got off to a shaky start.

In spring, the state took over the district’s special education program after an investigation revealed systemic delays and denials of services for scores of students with disabilities. By the fall, special education advocates were complaining that the state’s efforts were slow and understaffed.

They also charged that the independent monitor overseeing reforms, Laura Boedeker, and her superiors at the Illinois State Board of Education had failed to communicate with parents and roll out a process for repairing harm to students. In a November interview with Chalkbeat, Boedeker had this to say.

6. Chicago schools faced a second gauntlet of ratings.

Ratings are intended to signal school quality. But what happens when multiple ratings measure multiple things and don’t always paint the same picture of school performance? In October, the state education board released its annual report cards for schools across the state — and this year, for the first time, each school received one of four quality stamps. Nearly half of Chicago schools failed to meet the state’s threshold for performance.

7. It was a cold freeze in the world of charters.

It was a tough year for the independently operated public schools: the state’s newly elected governor, J.B. Pritzker, said while campaigning that he supported a moratorium on new charters. Meanwhile, state legislators worked to repeal the authority of the state charter commission, and Chicago Public Schools denied all new charter applications for the next school year.

8. A sexual abuse crisis rocked Chicago schools.
The district’s widespread failure to protect student victims was first reported in early June in the Chicago Tribune. In response, Jackson and district leadership announced several policy changes, including redoing background checks on teachers, vendors, coaches, and volunteers. That led to staffing shortages at the start of school and raised concerns from school council members and parent volunteers. Meanwhile, a preliminary report found that instability in leadership at Chicago schools contributed to a gap in oversight.

9. A measure of preschool performance debuted.

A new set of metrics released by the Illinois State Board of Education in conjunction with a power list of early childhood advocates showed that three out of four Illinois children starting kindergarten aren’t prepared. The data highlighted a critical need for better preparation in preschool and child care across the state.

10. The early education community wrestled with some tough questions.

A critical shortage of qualified staffers to work in infant centers, daycare programs, and community-based preschools threatened to undercut any push for universal pre-K program, which governor-elect J.B. Pritzker has repeatedly said he’d pursue.

Meanwhile, advocates throughout the state continued to sound the alarm over a decline in the number of children in state child care programs — as well as a dwindling number of providers. Then there’s this sobering statistic: In Illinois, the average annual cost of child care now outpaces what families spend on a year of rent.

A draft page of the Annual Regional Analysis

11. A controversial school inventory report signaled a change in the way the district does business.

In September, the school district released a comprehensive report confirming what many Chicagoans already know: Supply and demand for schools is uneven across neighborhoods, top academic schools are clustered in wealthier parts of the city, fewer black and Latino students have access to those schools, and more students are forgoing their neighborhood school.

The district’s release of the Annual Regional Analysis came a month after Chalkbeat obtained a copy of the then-unreleased report, which was compiled with help from the school-choice group Kids First Chicago. The report spurred town hall-style meetings intended to engage parents and community leaders and was cited as reasoning in the school board’s denial of a proposed downtown charter high school.

12. Chicago backed down from a school closing.

Parents seeking to stop Chicago Public Schools from displacing the popular National Teachers Academy in the Near South Side won a victory in what attorneys say may be the first court-ordered freeze of a school-closing measure in Chicago. The plan to close a beloved elementary school and open a new high school had pitted neighbors against each other and fueled calls of racism in the school closing decisions.

13. The founder of Chicago’s largest charter network stepped down, ending an era.

Longtime Noble Network founder and CEO Michael Milkie announced that he would retire, after revelations of a pattern of “inappropriate behavior with alumni,” which included hand-holding and “an instance of slow-dancing.” The announcement provided fodder for teachers who have been struggling to unionize Chicago’s biggest charter network. They said the developments strengthened their case for why the network needs a union.

14. Students spoke out about what they want in their schools.

From this video of a Chicago high schooler demanding more diversity in her English reading curriculum to a sit-in staged by students at Martin Luther King Jr. College Prep that included a list of concrete demands, students had a lot to say this year about what adults can do to help improve public education. They even have a message for the next occupant of City Hall. In this Chalkbeat Chicago video, Chicago high schoolers tell the city’s next mayor their ideas for improving public schools.

Controversial school inventory report starts to surface in Chicago decision making

2018-12-06T21:58:50+00:00

When Chicago Public Schools rolled out a comprehensive inventory of its schools and programs earlier this fall, community activists feared that the district would wield the report to close yet more sparsely attended neighborhood schools, and bring in more charters.

But just the opposite happened this week. The school board rejected Intrinsic Schools’ proposal to open a new charter high school in the Loop next school year that would draw students from across the city, following staff advice drawn on the report, the Annual Regional Analysis.

The vote disappointed backers of Intrinsic charter school, which operates a top-rated high school in the Irving Park community on the Northwest Side. The problem, school officials explained, is that the plan didn’t mesh with the district’s map pinpointing which neighborhoods need such high-quality schools.

It turns out, the Loop doesn’t fit the bill.

“Build schools where CPS needs it, and then we’ll have a different conversation,” board President Frank Clark told crestfallen supporters of Intrinsic.

The school board and district leadership are under increasing pressure to justify any new school openings as enrollment continues to drop, and as neighborhood schools losing population call for investments and programs to better serve and attract more students. Declining enrollment was cited on Wednesday as one of the most formidable risks the school system faces.

The school board also voted Wednesday to deny two other charter school applications, although for reasons not tied to the Annual Regional Analysis, which the district compiled with assistance from school-choice group Kids First.

Since it was made public in September, the inventory of academic options, enrollment, and quality has become a tool used by the district to convene conversations about neighborhood-by-neighborhood options and, as the board meeting made clear Wednesday, to make hard decisions. Mary Bradley, executive director of the district’s department of innovation and incubation, said the Intrinsic proposal “does not align with needs identified in the ARA.”

“Where are the needs?” Clark asked Bradley following her presentation explaining the denial.

“Quality needs are mainly on the South and West sides of Chicago,” schools chief Janice Jackson said.

Intrinsic parent Lucy Weatherly said she was deeply disappointed. She touted the current Intrinsic school’s Level 1-plus rating and supportive school community.

But her plea and those of other school supporters did not sway the board.

The denial might have been the first board decision about a school’s fate explicitly tied to the Annual Regional Analysis, which divides the city into 16 planning districts, including the one Intrinsic had proposed a school, the Central Area Region. The area includes downtown, the Loop, and the South Loop.

The district touts the detailed report as a base of facts to aid planning and community engagement, and it has hosted a series of workshops in neighborhoods around the city to discuss the findings. (There are six meetings left.) But several groups have criticized the document as too reliant on data and school ratings and questioned the district’s intent, given that school quality and enrollment that has been used to justify school closings, turnarounds, and proposals for more charter schools.

On Wednesday, however, school officials used the report to argue that the Intrinsic charter proposal doesn’t meet any existing community need for additional high quality seats.

The majority of students who live in the Central Area Region or attend school there attend top-rated schools. The region’s student population is about 20 percent white, 30 percent Asian, 34 percent black and 11 percent Hispanic, and it’s the only region where white and Asian students outnumber black and Hispanic students. The area is gaining Asian students and losing black students, and the families are growing more moneyed.

The region houses two top-rated selective enrollment schools that draw population from across the city, Jones College Prep and Walter Payton College Prep.

The Intrinsic school would have been the fifth high school in the region and the third charter high school, after Noble-Muchin and Perspectives-Joslin, two citywide schools rated Level 1-plus and 2-plus, respectively.

The area’s population and enrollment have increased since 2014. That’s a sharp contrast with most communities, hence Chicago Schools’ much bemoaned enrollment crisis, which in 2013 was used to justify closing 50 schools.

The challenges posed by Chicago’s dwindling number of children wasn’t lost on school officials at Wednesday’s meeting, especially during a presentation Chief Financial Officer Jennie Bennett provided about the key risks facing the school district.

Clark asked her what the biggest problems were.

Even amid a state takeover of the troubled special education program and continued fallout over the student sexual abuse scandal, her first response was declining enrollment.

Parents line up to push back against Chicago’s cold shoulder to charters

2018-12-05T23:04:46+00:00

Already a tough week for charters in Chicago, the city’s school board unanimously voted on Wednesday to deny all new charter proposals for the 2019-20 school year. It also voted to close two underperforming campuses, Kwame Nkrumah Charter School in West Roseland and Urban Prep West in University Village, with one abstention from Vice President Jaime Guzman.

Poor academic performance and shaky finances were among the reasons CEO Janice Jackson gave in recommendations made public earlier this week to close the schools.

Meanwhile, outside the board meeting, teachers from the nation’s first charter strike formed a noisy picket line that visitors had to cross to access district headquarters. Now in its second day, the strike against one of the city’s most entrenched charter networks, Acero Schools, has uprooted 7,500 children who attend 15 schools.

Propelled by their fear that the city is increasingly turning a cold shoulder to the privately run, publicly funded schools, a parade of charter parents from networks across the city weaved through sign-toting Acero teachers to speak to the school board Wednesday.

The parents voiced support for their individual networks’ charter renewals and, more broadly, countered the week’s prevailing anti-charter narrative with personal stories of college perseverance, tailor-fit solutions to chronic problems, and warm “open door” policies to families.

Speakers represented several charter schools and networks, from the 18-campus Noble Network to Intrinsic, which manages a 1,000-student combined middle and high school in Irving Park. An Intrinsic proposal for a citywide high school located near the Loop was among the three that the board denied.

“Let’s support any school that’s doing well, and let’s support those that aren’t doing well,” said parent Michael Nash, whose children attend CICS Avalon, a Level 1-rated, mostly black school in a Far South Side neighborhood where parents often lament the lack of quality options. “A great school attracts great residents to any neighborhood.”

“What’s the essence of your message?” board President Frank Clark asked Nash, one of the morning’s first public commenters.

“The essence of my message is that these schools are lacking support across the board,” Nash replied.

Ebony Williams, the parent of three children at Noble Network’s Johnson College Prep, gave one of the day’s most heartfelt pleas, describing how a village of educators and counselors at the Englewood campus rallied around her daughter after Williams’ husband was killed.

“My daughter was drowning, and I didn’t know how to get her a lifejacket,” said Williams, describing how one-on-one counseling and attention for her daughter’s depression “exceeded her expectations.”

This school year, the Chicago district oversees 142 non-traditional campuses, either charter, contract or option schools. That comes out to slightly more than 20 percent of all public schools.

Acero is the district’s second largest charter operator. The largest charter network, Noble, is still reeling from its own shakeup: the sudden departure of its co-founder, Michael Milkie, after complaints surfaced that he acted inappropriately toward alumni.

Signaling a city-state thaw, Pritzker names Chicago schools chief to transition team

2018-11-27T20:16:07+00:00

Chicago schools chief Janice Jackson headlines a 35-person advisory group formed by Governor-elect J.B. Pritzker to build and support his education agenda for the next four years.

Pritzker, Jackson and other advisers gathered Tuesday morning at Melody Elementary School, in the Garfield Park community on the West Side, to announce an “Educational Success Committee” that include education leaders, lawmakers, advocates, and academics.

Pritzker said the committee would produce a report on improving the quality of education in Illinois schools, but that “their work isn’t over” once their findings go public around his inauguration in January

“I’m going to need everybody behind me on each of the transition teams to continue to advise me through the course of the administration,” said Pritzker, a billionaire philanthropist, venture capitalist, and heir to the Hyatt fortune.

His appointment of Jackson and other big names from Chicago sets a more collegial tone in the relationship between Chicago and Springfield. Chicago has often been pitted against the rest of the state in funding for schools and in the debates over the state basing school funding on student need — a change that has benefited Chicago and other districts with high populations of low-income and immigrant students.

Pritzker’s education transition team differs markedly from the one current Gov. Bruce Rauner picked for his transition, which included only one Chicago-area education leader — Chicago International Charter School CEO Beth Purvis.

Jackson leads Pritzker’s committee with co-chairs state Sen. Andy Manar (D-Bunker Hill) , state Rep. Emanuel Welch (D-Hillside), and Illinois Education Association President Kathi Griffin.

“We must acknowledge the fact that not every single student and every community has access to the same education, and we intend to fix that, not only in our great city, but throughout the state of illinois,” Jackson said.

However, Jackson, Pritzker, and others warned that equity will be hard to come by unless the state bridges the gap between what it invests in K-12 education and what the state has acknowledged that districts need to provide every child a quality education.

The committee of mostly Democrats was notable not only for its members, but also for whom it omits. Pritzker skipped over Illinois state school board chief Tony Smith, who chaired Rauner’s education transition team.

Earlier this month, Pritzker defeated incumbent Rauner by 15 points in one of the most expensive gubernatorial races in U.S. history. The next day, he added two big names in education to his transition team: former Chicago Board of Education Vice President Jesse Ruiz and early-childhood expert Barbara Bowman, co-founder of the Erikson Institute and mother of Valerie Jarrett, who was former President Barack Obama’s senior adviser.

From early childhood to beyond, Pritzker will face a host of critical public education issues once he takes office in January, including the mental health needs of students and teachers, to a dire educator shortage, to finding the funding required to help the state’s struggling districts while tackling poverty and racial gaps in education. Pritzker said in interviews with Chalkbeat and WBEZ that he supports an elected school board for Chicago, opposes school vouchers, and would impose a moratorium on charter school expansion.

At Melody on Tuesday, Pritzker said, “I’m not opposed to charter schools existing, but at the moment, we have enough.” He stressed that the state should take a closer look at how it’s managing current charters and should focus more on the K-12 funding gap.

As expected, Pritzker’s transition team also draws from advocates of early childhood education, which he supported philanthropically before taking office.

Among those are Christina Pacione-Zayas and Aisha Ray, both veterans of the pioneering Erikson Institute; Phyllis Glink, co-chair of the public-private partnership responsible for steering much of state policy directed at early education; and University of Chicago author James Heckman, whose research into the benefits of quality early experiences undergirds many of the economic arguments for investing public dollars in quality infant, day care and universal pre-K.

Here’s the roster of Pritzker’s Educational Success Committee:

Michael Amiridis, chancellor, University of Illinois at Chicago
Carmen Ayala, superintendent, Berwyn North SD 98
Christine Benson, retired superintendent, Mendota High School
Jennifer Bertino-Tarrant, state senator, Illinois General Assembly
Dale Chapman, president, Lewis and Clark Community College
Brent Clark, executive director, Illinois Association of School Administrators
Fred Crespo, state representative, Illinois General Assembly
Will Davis, state representative, Illinois General Assembly
Larry Dietz, president, Illinois State University
Kenneth Ender, president, Harper College
Jennifer Garrison, superintendent, Sandoval CUSD 501
Phyllis Glink, executive director, Irving B. Harris Foundation
James Heckman, professor, University of Chicago
Ed Hightower, executive director, Mannie Jackson Center for the Humanities Foundation
Kimberly Lightford, state senator, Illinois General Assembly
John Miller, vice president, Illinois Federation of Teachers
Mary Morten, board chair, Safe Schools Alliance
Zena Naiditch, president and CEO, Equip for Equality
Ginger Ostro, executive director, Advance Illinois
Kevin O’Mara, professor, Concordia University
Cristina Pacione-Zayas, policy director, Erikson Institute
Sylvia Puente, executive director, Latino Policy Forum
Aisha Ray, retired professor, Erikson Institute
Mimi Rodman, executive director, Stand for Children Illinois
Kevin Rubenstein, president, Illinois Alliance of Administrators of Special Education
Jane Russell, vice president, Illinois Federation of Teachers
Juan Salgado, chancellor, City Colleges of Chicago
Zaldwaynaka “Z” Scott, president, Chicago State University
Gloria Trejo, principal, Pioneer Elementary School
Maria Whelan, president and CEO, Illinois Action for Children
Barbara Wilson, executive vice president for academic affairs, University of Illinois System

Where Chicago students travel the farthest to school, questions about why residents dodge neighborhood campuses

2018-11-10T01:09:16+00:00

At a forum designed to explore solutions to putting top-rated schools and programs within reach of all Chicago students, residents of Greater Grand Crossing pushed Chicago Public Schools to help dispel stigmas they say makes their campuses a tough pitch to prospective families.

Nearly 100 residents, educators and school district leaders convened Thursday at Chicago Vocational Career Academy High School to review a district report on enrollment trends, school quality options, parent choice and program variety.

Known as the Annual Regional Analysis, it has spurred conversations about school quality, barriers to education equity — and fears of painful decisions to come amid an ongoing enrollment crisis. The school district presented hard numbers behind the problematic trend of shrinking neighborhood schools.

In a part of the city where students have one of the city’s longest commutes to school, district officials reviewed evidence of a troubling dynamic: students skipping over their neighborhood school and traveling long distances for other options.

The district’s chief school development officer, Hal Woods, drew from the report’s data about school quality, enrollment trends, choice patterns and programs, and reviewed data on the Greater Stony Island region, one of 16 planning areas defined by the city.

The region includes 10 communities in addition to Greater Grand Crossing, including South Shore, South Chicago, Chatham, Avalon Park, and Roseland. While clusters of middle class and affluent residents live in the area, most neighborhoods in the region have lower median household incomes.

As of last school year, when the analysis was compiled, the Greater Stony Island Region had about 24,000 students, most of them black, at nearly 50 schools.

Like in other parts of the city, many of the schools with neighborhood attendance boundaries suffer from underenrollment, bad reputations, a lack of of high-demand programs and low school quality ratings. But plenty of families are also skipping over top-rated schools.

This map shows the number of IB program seats per 100 students available to elementary and high school students in each planning area.

Attendees Thursday representing neighborhood schools said they don’t have shiny new buildings, or the finances or resources to wage a robust marketing campaign as many charter schools do. They sought district support to combat bad reputations and to inform other parents – beyond school ratings – about the good things happening on their campuses.

“Are students choosing schools in their region? I think this is a really critical slide to look at for folks in this room,” Woods said, lingering on a chart showing average commute times for students across the city.

Local elementary school students commute an average of 2.6 miles, the farthest of any region in the city. At the high school level, Greater Stony Island is tied with the Far Southwest Side region for the longest student commutes, an average of 5 miles compared with the citywide average of 3.6 miles.

In the past four years, the region has lost at least 2,600 district students – or 10 percent of its student population compared with a 6 percent drop citywide. The region had more than 4,200 unfilled, top-rated elementary school seats, but there are only about 450 unfilled Level 1 high school seats.

Of the four high schools in the area with neighborhood attendance boundaries, only Chicago Vocational is in good standing, according to the district’s school rating system. The other three neighborhood schools, including Harlan Community Academy High School and Hirsch Metropolitan High School, all suffer from low ratings and dwindling enrollment.

Meanwhile, the only schools in good standing or building enrollment are charter schools like Gary Comer College Prep with the Noble Network, or South Shore High School, a district-run selective enrollment school, and all draw attendance from across the city. Some attendees accused the schools of siphoning students from neighborhood schools with attendance boundaries.

But nearly two in three high school students leave the region altogether, “which is the high for all ARA regions,” Woods said.

In small discussion groups, attendees questioned how well school ratings actually convey quality, emphasizing that economic development, safety of the school neighborhood and the climate inside also factor into parents’ decisions.

Many said that the district should help schools suffering from stigma communicate their accomplishments and benefits, whether via social media, websites or billboards.

“We have wonderful things to offer — how are we going to market that at CPS?” said Wenda Royal, community school resource coordinator at South Shore Fine Arts Academy, speaking for a group of participants.

“There’s perceptions of schools that go back 10, 15, 25 or more years, that are no longer accurate,” Woods agreed.

Chicago schools parent Sherretha Richardson.

Sherretha Richardson, a parent of three district students at Carnegie, Kenwood and Bouchett who lives in the East Side community, said marketing is especially important for schools whose ratings might not reflect a school’s successes.

“You look at Chicago Vocational, and you see a Level 2-plus. But you have Level 1-plus administration and teachers as far as their effort, their energy,” she said.

She said the district has to do a better job of engaging parents with technology.

“This meeting here, for the parents that couldn’t come out, there should have been a webinar, they should have had it on the internet, where the parents could have chimed in and actually heard what was going on,” she said.

District CEO Janice Jackson was paying attention.

“One of my commitments is really to restore the credibility and the integrity of our school system, and it starts with sharing more information, and that’s what this event is about tonight,” Jackson said in opening remarks.

She’s begun an initiative that allows schools to request programs like the International Baccalaureate on their campuses. The alternative, she said, “is what has occurred for too long, which is the people in charge, me, my team, sit around a conference table, look at a map, look at data, and make decisions about who should get what.”

“What I say to some of the people who have a problem with this is that you can demand community engagement, but you cannot tell me how to engage the community,” she said. “And I think this is the right approach, I think this is what we need to do to make sure everybody feels like they have a fair shot.”

In Chicago, the surprising reasons so many students fail P.E.

2018-11-08T22:29:18+00:00

Back in eighth grade, Jennifer Nava used to love physical education.

“It is super fun and you feel safe and comfortable participating,” said Nava, now a junior at Thomas Kelly High School in Chicago’s Brighton Park.

But when she started ninth grade, that changed dramatically. “In high school, you don’t want to put effort into it and embarrass yourself,” she said.

Even so, Nava figured out how to pass P.E. But not all her classmates managed to do the same.

Surprising new research shows around one in 10 Chicago students fail P.E. — a higher rate than math, English, or any other class. Yet nearly everyone passes gym in eighth grade.

The failures matter because experts say they could portend eventual failure in high school and beyond.

So why does P.E. suddenly become so challenging in ninth grade?

For one thing, the course changes significantly. In middle school, students may have gym class once a week and don’t have to change clothes. In high school, freshman have gym every day, must bring and change into exercise clothing, and also have to take a health and reproduction class.

Students like Nava say those changes, compounded by adolescent self-consciousness heightened by having to take their clothes off in a crowded locker room and to shed sweaty clothing and rush to the next class, felt like too much.

The University of Chicago Consortium on School Research’s Hidden Risk report analyzes Chicago Public Schools student grades across a range of subjects from eighth to ninth grade. It found that some of the sharpest drops in GPA came in non-core subjects such as P.E. and art.

One Chicago P.E. teacher, Carly Zwiazek, said that, on any given day, she may see up to 200 students, or 40 to 45 students in each of her classes at Curie Metro High School in Archer Heights. Teaching such large classes makes following up on no-show or lagging students is challenging, she said.

She said she fails students who skip class, but not necessarily those who refuse to change into gym clothes. “That is only part of your grade for the day,” she said. “The lesson is to engage based on your skill level.”

She sees P.E. as a lab to learn to manage mundane but important demands of life as adults. “I simply connect it with the real world,” Zwiazek said. “You’ll have to wear the appropriate stuff to work, work with people you normally don’t like to work with.”

But she struggles to convince students, as she battles social attitudes that devalue exercise and gym. “The classes aren’t taken seriously. They are looked at as electives,” she said. “But if they are a high school graduation requirement they should be held to the same level of importance.”

The freshman year conundrum

The transition from eighth to ninth grade is tough, and that isn’t a new phenomenon. No matter how well they did in middle school, nearly all Chicago students see their grades fall when they start high school.

That difficulty surfaces at a critical time: Some education researchers have called ninth grade the most important year in high school.

The Chicago district uses a metric called “freshman on-track” to judge whether students are making enough progress to position them to graduate on time. This year, the district hit its highest measure for freshmen on track yet, at 89.4 percent.

But that figure doesn’t take into account non-core classes like P.E.

What struck researchers was the sharp rise in failure rates in subjects such as P.E. that, only the year before, most students were passing.

In Chicago, hardly any eighth-graders fail P.E., said Jenny Nagaoka, the Consortium on School Research’s deputy director. But in ninth grade, almost 10 percent fail, the research found.

That was the biggest drop in grades for any subject, with an average drop of 0.81 point from middle to high school. The drop was particularly sharp for black boys, whose grades in P.E. dropped one full point, and for students who were already at high risk of dropping out of high school.

The figures are important not only as indicators, but because non-core subjects make up one-third of many students’ grade-point averages.

“If you fail P.E., your probability of graduating is a little bit lower than if you failed just algebra, or just English, or just biology,” said Nagaoka. “We tend to discount less academic classes, but they are as predictive of graduation as core subjects.”

A sharp learning curve

Why are so many students failing or struggling in P.E.? Former and current Chicago students say it’s because P.E. in high school runs into a perfect storm of students’ body insecurities, the logistical difficulties of changing clothing during the school day, and the struggle of juggling classes in a demanding new environment.

P.E. and health class are mandatory in ninth and 10th grades.

Veronica Rodriguez, who graduated from Back of the Yards High School last spring, said many girls in her classes would go into bathroom stalls to change instead of in the locker room. It took them more time, she said, but made them feel more comfortable.

Rodriguez said changing and participating are particularly difficult for girls. Students who wouldn’t swim during their menstrual periods would earn penalties from teachers.

“They would add a lot of pressure and shame students who wouldn’t want to participate in activities,” said Rodriguez, now a freshman at the University of Illinois at Chicago, about her teachers.

P.E.’s focus on following rules might explain the high number of black and Latino male students struggling in gym. The Hidden Risks report notes that grades in gym are often based on judging compliance and discipline, areas in which research shows that educators more harshly judge male students of color.

Nava said she would like to see gym teachers be more understanding of teenagers, especially those dealing with their first years of menstruation.

“When a period hits, it’s really embarrassing to have to wear shorts,” she said. “If they don’t feel comfortable playing basketball on their period you shouldn’t threaten them.”

She also said some of the reasons given for changing clothing in P.E. — so that students don’t get sweaty — are less important in schools where temperatures fluctuate. Many neighborhood Chicago schools fail to control building temperatures. At Kelly, Nava said, students roast in classrooms in both summer and winter. Changing for gym, she said, “is not making a difference.”

Instead, Nava said she would tell her gym teacher that she forget her gym clothes and join students standing along the wall instead of running laps or playing basketball. Then, one week a month, she would be sure to bring her gym clothes every day so her grade didn’t drop.

And when it was time to go to another class from gym and she was running late, Nava would prioritize arriving on time. “If I have to pick between my AP psychology class and P.E., I’m taking my AP psychology.”

Focus on the transition

Over the past decade, the district has tried to smooth the transition for entering ninth-graders, in part by focusing on young people who were at risk of dropping out and by zeroing in on students struggling in their core subjects.

The Hidden Risks report, school officials acknowledge, shows a lingering, clear gap.

The district must pay more attention to student performance in non-core classes, Janice Jackson, CEO of Chicago Public Schools, told Chalkbeat. “I can see this influencing practice at the school level,” Jackson said. “There is the next edge of growth, and this data has really pointed that out.”

One model might come from North-Grand High School, which emphasizes the importance of P.E. from freshman orientation, when new students learn they need P.E. and health credits to graduate. P.E. teachers spell out expectations in detail, Principal Emily Feltes said.

“We talk about what to do if you miss a day,” she said. “Even things like, ‘You will have a locker in the locker room, let’s practice putting our stuff in there.’”

The school also includes P.E. teachers in conversations with English and math teachers about student development and how to help a student’s performance.

“I think it has been helpful for us to have them involved in professional learning communities,” Feltes said.

At Sullivan High School, Principal Chad Adams regards the nearly 10 percent P.E. failure rate as “kind of alarming.”

Sullivan folds electives into the literacy department, in an effort to integrate them with the academic instruction all students receive. “We look at standards being taught in English and social science, and try to find standards we can also teach in elective classes,” Adams said.

To fully track how non-core classes like art and P.E. affect student achievement, the Hidden Risk report suggests expanding the definition of the “freshman on-track” metric to consider failure in non-core classes as a warning sign.

The report also suggests that, in light of the large number of black and Latino male students struggling in P.E., educators review how they’re grading, to correct for teacher bias about compliance and discipline.

Jennifer Nava has another suggestion. She said she’d like to see schools find a more thoughtful way to balance P.E. requirements with the comfort of teenagers in the difficult first year of high school.

“Students have to pick between their own comfort and grades,” she said.

Beyond hiring: The struggle to diversify Chicago’s teaching ranks

2018-11-05T17:56:45+00:00

Even though Illinois schools are increasingly diversifying, the state’s teaching ranks remain stubbornly white, according to new data from the Illinois Report Card.

Efforts to recruit a more diverse group of teachers haven’t moved the needle forward much in recent years. And in Chicago, the ranks of black teachers continues to decline, and the percentage of Latino teachers has only increased slightly.

Still, when it comes to the diversity of the workforce, Chicago does better than the rest of the state, even though the percentages of black and Latino teachers don’t come close to matching the diversity of the district’s students. This comes despite plenty of evidence to the benefits. Studies show better academic and social-emotional outcomes when students have a teacher from a similar cultural background, especially black and Latino students.

At Chicago Public Schools, the percentage of black teachers continues to decline, and the percentage of Latino teachers has only increased slightly in recent years. Black and Latino students make up 37 and 47 percent of students at the district, respectively.

Robert Muller, dean of the National College of Education at National Louis University, said his institution is one of many wrestling with the question of how to bring more people of color into the teaching profession. But overall, “the composition of the pipeline has not shifted dramatically in recent years.”

He said that focusing on supporting diverse new teachers with mentoring and other supports early in their first few years on the job could address “leaks” in the teacher pipeline. Muller contends that keeping, not just hiring black teachers, is one of the district’s biggest diversity problems.

Of the 214 new black teachers hired in the 2015 fiscal year, only 51 percent were still working at the district by their third year, compared to 69 percent of Latino teachers and 53 percent of white teachers, whom it’s important to note, accounted for three out of every five new teachers, according to district human resource data.

The one-year retention rate for all new teachers in the 2017 fiscal year was 80 percent, but the retention rate for new black teachers was about 4 percentage points below that, the lowest among the three biggest racial groups at the district.

Christine Geovanis, spokeswoman for the Chicago Teachers Union, attributed some of the decline in black teachers to Chicago Board of Education policies, citing several ongoing federal civil rights lawsuits against the district and city.

One suit claims school closings and turnarounds since 2000 have had “a disparate impact on African-American tenured teachers and staff” on the South and West sides of the city, where a majority of the teachers worked. The suit notes the board closed about 140 schools from 2001 to 2013, and since 2006 has put about three dozen schools through turnarounds, in which school faculty and leadership are replaced in schools deemed underperforming. Another suit claims that a round of layoffs in 2011 that shed more than 900 classroom teachers disproportionately impacted African-Americans.

A closer look at the numbers

Statewide, 83 percent of all teachers are white, a decrease of only 2 percentage points in the past decade. Black and Hispanic teachers make up about 6 percent each, and Asian teachers 1.5 percent. About three in four candidates for teaching positions in the state identifies as white.

The state’s student population is about half white. The percentage of students of color in Illinois has grown from 46 percent to 52 percent since 2008.

Of the 10 biggest school districts in Illinois by enrollment, Chicago has the lowest percentage of white teachers, about 52 percent.

Racial make-up of 10 biggest school districts in Illinois

District	White Teachers	White Students	Black Students	Latino Students	Asian Students
Naperville CUSD 203	92.4%	63%	4.9%	10.6%	16.8%
Plainfield SD 202	91.9%	55.9%	10.4%	22.9%	6.4%
CUSD 308 (Oswego)	91.1%	57.2%	9.2%	21.4%	6.6%
CUSD 300 (Algonquin)	90.8%	47.7%	5.1%	37.8%	5.8%
Indian Prairie CUSD 204	88.8%	44.2%	9%	11.8%	30.3%
Rockford SD 205	86%	30.2%	31.1%	27.4%	3.9%
Valley View CUSD 365U	84.2%	24.2%	19.9%	44.8%	6.4%
Waukegan CUSD 60	74.4%	3.9%	14.6%	77.4%	1.2%
SD U-46 (Elgin)	72.4%	26.7%	6.5%	54%	8.3%
City of Chicago SD 299	52.2%	10.3%	36.9%	46.9%	4.1%

In Chicago Public Schools, 47 percent of students are Latino, 37 percent are black, and 10 are percent white. Among teachers, 19 percent are Latino, and 52 percent white. About 21 percent of teachers are black, down from about 41 percent in 2000.

A matter of equity

Matt Lyons, chief talent officer at Chicago Public Schools, acknowledged the district faces major challenges in shifting racial balances, the biggest being that fewer people are training to be educators.

“All of our data show that we actually are hiring non-white teacher candidates,” Lyons said. “The challenge is there aren’t enough of them.”

The decline has been particularly notable among black teachers. There are already racial gaps in college completion and teacher prep enrollment to contend with. The number of African-Americans statewide graduating with degrees in education has dropped by more than half, from 1,724 in 2009 to 802 in 2016, according to the Illinois Board of Higher Education.

The district is trying out several tactics for boosting the number of Latino and black teachers. Among them is a teacher residency program launched last year with National Louis University and Relay Graduate School of Education that targets individuals looking to transition to the education field and paraprofessionals already working in classrooms who want to be full-time teachers. Tapping into that pool of classroom support staff is key because those employees tend to include more people of color.

The district is relaunching and expanding teaching academies at high schools, which prepare students to pursue an education degree, and has partnerships with teacher training programs that place special emphasis on recruiting people of color. Experts said that diversifying the teacher pipeline starts with improving the work conditions and changing the narrative around teaching, and connecting students with the idea of a rewarding and viable career in education as early as high school.

Hiring more black and Latino teachers isn’t just a matter of fairness or progressive sensibilities. It’s a matter of student achievement and racial equity, said Elizabeth Todd-Breland, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and author of the new book “A Political Education: Black Politics and Education Reform in Chicago Since the 1960s.”

Research shows that having teachers of color benefits students of color and white students alike. Students of color can have role models who look like them, and white students see their teachers of color as authority figures and professionals, countering some negative characterizations in the media.

Studies also show that when students have a teacher from a similar cultural background, attendance and test scores improve. Students are more likely to be held to high expectations, and less likely to suffer from teachers’ implicit bias — those unconscious, automatic stereotypes, and attitudes people foster that can influence decision making, such as the idea that certain ethnicities are inherently unintelligent, aggressive, or criminal. This bias plays out in disproportionately high disciplinary rates for black and Latino students, research shows.

The impact of having a teacher of the same ethnicity or race is especially powerful for talented black students, who studies show are admitted to gifted programs at a lower rate than other students. They are more likely to be identified by black teachers, according to the research.

Diversifying the teacher workforce is among the issues on the to-do list for Chicago’s new chief equity office, district CEO Janice Jackson told Chalkbeat in July. The department is now headed by former Tilden High School principal Maurice Swinney.

“If there is not a concerted effort in place to take an affirmative action to change the demographics of the teaching force, it will stay the same or get worse,” Todd-Breland said. “This new equity officer, this is one of their charges.”

Asked if the district had a robust plan for addressing the issue and engaging communities around it, Matt Lyons deferred to Swinney. Chalkbeat has on multiple occasions requested interviews with the official since he announced his promotion in September, but the school district has not yet made him available.

Online tool shows who makes the big bucks at Chicago schools

2018-10-31T22:43:54+00:00

How much is your favorite principal making?

It’s possible to find out: An online tool offers a look at the paychecks brought home by staff, educators and leadership at Chicago Public Schools.

The Better Government Association just redesigned and updated its public salaries database to provide 2017 numbers for more than 500,000 public workers across Illinois, including at local school districts.

The database shows that last year the Chicago school district spent $2 billion on 49,000 employees who made a median salary of $46,124.

Chicago schools’ highest spending department was the Office of Diverse Learner Supports and Services, which runs the special education program.

The database includes salaries as well as overtime, bonuses, benefits and other forms of extra pay. The Chicago Teachers Union contract lists a base salary of about $51,000 for new teachers, with a pension pickup of $3,546 for a total of $54,199 in compensation.

In 2017, the list of individual earners was topped by Denise Joyce Little, who made$325,999 in total compensation, according to the Better Government Association. She retired in August of that year as senior advisor to former district CEO Forrest Claypool, after 40 years of service at the district, and began receiving payments from a more than $140,000 pension.

The second-highest earner was Parkside Community Academy teacher Sharon Stingley, who made $283,579, and Network 5 schools chief Wanda Juareze Washington, with $246,892. In fourth place was now-disgraced district CEO Forrest Claypool, who made $246,154.

Claypool’s successor Janice Jackson has since gotten a raise to go with her promotion, but in 2017 she had the seventh-highest salary with $206,769.

The database lets users explore the distribution of salaries within an agency like the school district, compare salaries in the same department, and compare the payroll of one government agency to another, among other features.

The association compiled the information with help from DataMade, a Chicago-based civic technology company.

Chicago’s public school system is still shrinking, new data shows

2018-10-26T18:07:00+00:00

After 15 years of consecutive drops, the number of students enrolled in Chicago’s public schools fell again this year.

Enrollment dropped 2.7 percent, to 361,314 students, from the previous fall, according to a count taken on the 20th day of school. New data were released Friday. (The district also released new school ratings on Friday. You can find your school’s latest rating here.)

Size matters, because the number of students determines how many critical state dollars a district receives. In Chicago, state funding accounts for roughly 30 percent of the district budget, including paying into the employee pension fund.

At the school level, per-student funding determines how many teachers a principal can hire, whether or not there are librarians and arts teachers, and how many programs are offered. Principals received this school year’s budgets last spring based on prior year counts.

Schools that lost students will not lose funding for this year; however, 54 schools that anticipated growth and that did not hit targets will lose money. The average adjustment per school is $59,000, with $3.2 million in total forfeited, the district said. The district said in a statement that it will not eliminate any jobs as a result.

On the flip side, the district also announced that schools that gained students since last school year would receive additional funding — to total $15.5 million across 307 schools. That’s to account for budgeting that was based on previous year counts.

“The district’s improved financial position means we can support growing schools and invest more in schools where enrollment is declining with funds specifically designed to support schools that are underenrolled,” said Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson.

Plans to support schools losing population include such assists as a $10 million small schools fund and a new underenrolled schools policy — passed by the board this week — that codifies alternatives to closure.

The number of students in Chicago charters declined by 1 percent to total 54,569, and the number of prekindergarten students dropped by less than 1 percent, too, to 17,668, despite a citywide push under Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Chicago schools aren’t the only ones shrinking. Enrollment is down across the state. A declining birth rate, fewer immigrants, and a population in retrenchment are all to blame.

District projections show Chicago schools losing another 20,000 students across the next three years. The trends mirror population drops in Chicago, which has about 182,000 fewer residents than it did 18 years ago, according to U.S. Census data. More than 220,000 black residents have left the city since the year 2000.

Emanuel tries to shore up education legacy in final budget address

2018-10-17T17:14:35+00:00

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel choked up twice during his final budget address to Chicago’s City Council Wednesday morning: once when he talked about his wife, Amy Rule, and the other when he read aloud a letter from a John Marshall High School senior who lives on Chicago’s West Side.

The address highlighted millions he wants to spend to expand after-school programming, middle school mentoring, and a summer jobs initiative for Chicago teens. It also signaled loud and clear how Emanuel views his legacy: as the mayor who took the reins when the city faced a $600 million deficit and then righted Chicago’s fiscal ship, while pushing for the expansion of programs that serve public schools and children.

In the speech, he ticked off such accomplishments as expanding kindergarten citywide from a half- to a full-day, extending the city’s school day, increasing the graduation rate to a record 78.2 percent up from 57 percent when he took office in 2011, and paving the path for universal pre-kindergarten, though that initiative is still in the early stages.

“When you step back and look at the arc of what we’ve done in the past seven years, and take a wide lens view, from free pre-K to free community college, from Safe Passage to mentors to more tutors in our neighborhood libraries … at end of day, it is really no different than what Amy and I, or you and your partner, would do for your own children,” he said.

Emanuel, the former congressman and chief of staff for President Barack Obama who announced on the first day of school in September that he won’t be running for re-election, acknowledged that shoring up civic finances isn’t glitzy work — not like, say, plopping a major park in the middle of downtown, as his predecessor Richard M. Daley did by opening Millennium Park.

But, said Emanuel, “one thing I’ve learned in the past 24 years in politics is that they don’t build statues for people who restore fiscal stability.”

Outside of the longer school day and school year, the mayor stressed his work expanding programming for children — particularly teenagers — after school and in summers as an antidote to the city’s troubling violence that did not abate in his term. Amid a $10.7 billion budget plan that includes a chunk of new tax-increment finance dollars that will go toward schools, the new budget lays out $500,000 more funding for his signature Summer Jobs program, bringing projected total spending on that up to $18 million in 2019.

He also set aside $1 million for his wife’s Working on Womanhood mentoring program that currently serves 500 women and girls, $1 million more for the after-school program After School Matters, and more money for free dental services at Chicago Public Schools and trauma-informed therapy programs.

The mayor’s address had barely ended when the Chicago Teachers Union sent an email with the subject line “No victory lap for this failed mayor.” It pointed to blemishes on Emanuel’s education record, from closing 50 schools in 2013 to systemic failings in the city’s special education program — an issue that now has Chicago Public Schools under the watchful eye of a state monitor.

CTU President Jesse Sharkey called on the city’s next mayor to restore money to mental health clinics and social services, fund smaller class sizes, broaden a “sustainable schools” program that partners community agencies with languishing neighborhood schools, and invest in more social workers, psychologists, nurses, librarians, and teachers’ assistants.

In his address, Emanuel did not talk about some of the tough decisions the school district had to make during tough budget years, such as the school closings or widespread teacher layoffs that topped 2,000 that same year.

He did, however, stress his philosophy that investments in children must extend beyond the typical school day. In the letter from the Marshall High School senior, the teen wrote that, until his freshman year of high school, “I never saw or met any males like me who lead successful lives.” The letter went on to praise the nonprofit Becoming A Man, a male mentoring program that has expanded among Chicago schools during Emanuel’s tenure.

The teen intends to attend Mississippi Valley State University next fall, the mayor said. When Emanuel pointed out the young man and his Becoming A Man program mentor in the City Council chambers, many in attendance gave them a standing ovation.

Can a program designed for British diplomats fix Chicago’s schools?

2018-10-10T02:55:19+00:00

Senn High senior Shrda Shrestha is attending her neighborhood high school in Edgewater against pretty much everybody’s advice.

“When I first started looking at high schools, people were usually like, ‘It’s selective enrollment or nothing,’” said Shrestha. “Then I found out about IB.”

IB, or International Baccalaureate, is the rigorous curriculum that Chicago Public Schools hopes will improve the health of its neighborhood schools, both by improving academic outcomes and influencing the decisions of top students such as Shrestha.

The idea is that IB’s rigorous academics will both improve outcomes for low-income and black and Latino students, and also keep middle- and upper-income families from skipping on out on neighborhood schools, either in favor of one of Chicago’s 11 elite, selective-enrollment high schools or more drastic options such as private school or a move to the suburbs.

There are reasons for optimism. First, Chicago district students who complete the full IB curriculum are 40 percent more likely to attend college than a matched group of non-IB students, and also more likely to persist in college, according to a 2012 report by the University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research.

That’s especially encouraging because the city’s IB students closely mirror the overall district population — mostly low-income, and mostly Latino and African-American — compared with the whiter and wealthier student populations at selective-enrollment schools.

Second, IB is helping neighborhood schools make inroads with top students, as 23 percent of kids who were admitted both to IB and selective-enrollment schools last year chose IB, according to district data — music to the ears of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

IB is “becoming a true qualitative choice and competitor to the selective-enrollment schools,” Emanuel told Chalkbeat. (Read our full interview with Emanuel and Chicago schools chief Janice Jackson here.)

Indeed, IB’s success is a potential silver lining for Emanuel, who is trying to recalibrate an education legacy marked by declining enrollment and punctuated by the closing of 50 schools in 2013.

Chicago’s IB push already has survived two mayors and nine school chiefs, likely because it’s working—and indeed, the Geneva, Switzerland-based IB holds up its results in Chicago as an example of the curriculum’s potential to transform schools worldwide. Administrators here see it not just as a sell to parents but also a way to connect students and teachers around one consistent curriculum.

It’s clear that the program is different from traditional coursework, both in its rigor and its cross-disciplinary approach.

IB is “about expanding your knowledge in all subjects and then seeing that they all connect somehow,” says Senn High’s Shrestha.

From elite international schools to Chicago

The International Baccalaureate Organization developed its initial curriculum 50 years ago with the idea that the children of British diplomats living abroad could point to it as a reliable, standardized credential when applying to Cambridge and Oxford. Plenty of elite boarding schools use IB, but there’s been a dramatic shift in IB’s clientele, to the point that the organization’s biggest North American customer is Chicago Public Schools, which supports IB programming in 59 schools.

IB’s founders “would never have imagined in their wildest dreams that the people that benefit most from it seem to be kids in urban schools,” said Paul Campbell, the organization’s head of regional development in the Americas.

Now, as Chicago signals that IB is the centerpiece of its efforts to revitalize neighborhood schools, other urban districts around the country are following suit — Los Angeles, Dallas, and Milwaukee each offer IB at a handful of schools, for example. That means taking up the challenge of preparing students for a demanding curriculum.

The cornerstone of the International Baccalaureate curriculum is its Diploma Program, the intensive two-year curriculum for 11th and 12th graders. These students take seven college-level courses that include specialized exams graded by IBO staffers — the externally evaluated tests, which cost up to $291 per student, are one of the most significant costs associated with IB.

The full Diploma Program courseload is notoriously difficult, to the point where “it’s a professional joke among DP advisers that they are also on-the-ground counselors for kids struggling with the courseload,” said Charles Tocci, an education professor at Loyola University. “It’s intense and it’s heavy duty.”

The Diploma Program isn’t right for every student, even the brightest ones. Students who play sports or hold a job can find the Diploma Program to be too much—in fact, the daughter of IB’s Campbell chose not to pursue the Diploma Program because she was also in her school’s orchestra.

Students who pursue the program anyway do so while counting the cost.

Senn High School Principal Mary Beck talks to students.

“I don’t sleep—that’s how I do it,” said Senn senior Lynn Trieu, who works part-time at a sushi restaurant in addition to her studies. Yet Trieu also says she has no regrets. “It’s a little harder, I can see that, but it’s also something I like because it’s challenging me.”

Not every IB student needs to sign up for the heavy-duty experience. Statistically, the program’s strong postsecondary outcomes are achieved not only by students who pass the tests and earn IB’s prestigious diploma (which is separate from a school diploma), but also to students who complete the program and graduate but don’t earn the IB Diploma. And Chicago leaders say that taking even a couple of IB-level courses enhances students’ college readiness.

Building an IB pipeline

One of the main challenges for IB in Chicago is that few students arrive in 11th grade equipped to thrive in IB’s signature, two-year Diploma Program. Even when the transition starts earlier, it can still be jarring.

Fiske Elementary in Woodlawn, for example, was certified earlier this year to offer IB’s Middle Years Program, which begins in sixth grade. Fiske Principal Cynthia Miller was immediately convinced it wasn’t enough.

“My children from pre-K to fifth grade are not exposed to that type of rigor, so it makes us work even harder to try to get them caught up,” said Miller.

Now Miller is getting her wish as part of Chicago’s latest expansion of its big bet on IB — the school will add IB’s Primary Years Program as part of a district initiative announced last month to create a citywide network of elementary and high schools.

The expanded IB curriculum not only acclimates students to the program’s intensiveness, but also starts them on a track that’s designed to improve the odds of completing the challenging diploma program.

At Senn High, for example, sophomore English students in the middle-years program spent last week comparing the rhetorical strategies employed in speeches by Michelle Obama and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The exercise serves as a practice run for an assignment that students will be given during the diploma program.

“Our department has done a lot of work in these lower grades to get students ready for [the diploma program],” says Senn teacher Erin Riordan. “It’s useful and it’s good for us to work toward that.”

Chicago’s investment in IB’s early grades programming seems to be paying off as the number of students entering the diploma program has doubled in five years, from an average of 450 from 2012-15 to 911 last school year. (Citywide, there are 16,000 students in IB programs, but that figure includes elementary and middle programs.)

Even though it’s on the upswing, the 911 diploma-seeking high schoolers pales when compared with about 14,500 in the city’s selective-enrollment high schools.

Still, administrators say that IB’s expansion into Chicago elementary schools is useful because it funnels more students to the Diploma Program. That is a primary goal, but educators say IB’s lower-years programming, which includes extensive teacher training, is paying dividends beyond the students it sends to the Diploma Program.

“You’re creating the same expectations amongst all classrooms at a grade level,” says Lori Zaimi, principal of Peirce Elementary in Edgewater — Senn High’s IB feeder school. Without IB, “often you’ll see teachers dabbling in different training opportunities and there’s no consistency across the grade level. Now everybody’s teaching the same unit, and teachers are talking the same language, including the emphasis on things like inquiry and a global context.”

IB also emphasizes continuity by employing a handful of themes that are consistent from year to year such as “how we express ourselves,” “how the world works,” and “sharing the planet.”

Teachers implementing IB have also found the curriculum useful beyond preparing students for the Diploma Program. When Senn High added a Middle Years Program in 2013, program Director David Gregg quickly concluded “it wasn’t inherently honors level — it was really just best practices that was engaging and would help students kind of build skills and connect to their worlds.”

In response, Senn then pushed to make IB’s ninth- and 10th-grade programming the standard throughout their building, even for students who aren’t planning to enter the Diploma Program.

Compared with other premium curricular options such as the Advanced Placement courses supported by the College Board, IB’s offerings are notable for their emphasis on “sustained inquiry around topics,” said Jal Mehta, a Harvard education professor and coauthor of an upcoming book that examines attempts to remake American high schools, including IB.

Mehta said teachers “still experience the AP curriculum as essentially like racing through lots of topics fairly quickly, without opportunities for an in-depth exploration. On the whole, I think IB does a much better job of balancing breadth and depth.”

There are no externally moderated tests that measure effectiveness of the IB elementary and middle-year programs.

Becoming an IB school takes years to apply, train teachers and often rewrite the school’s mission statement to ensure that it encompasses IB’s desired level of rigor.

Every certified elementary school must teach only IB’s program, rather than offering it as one track among several. Middle year programs don’t have that restriction, but IB-only curriculum — which Chicago schools officials refer to as “wall-to-wall IB” — is the strong preference of the international organization behind the curriculum.

A 40-year rollout aimed at access

From the beginning, Chicago’s rolled out IB as a neighborhood-school alternative to the district’s sought-after test-in high schools. Those selective schools, while high-performing, have traditionally skewed whiter and wealthier than the district’s overall student population—and their limited number of seats means that few students have access.

At Chicago’s IB high schools, in contrast, three-quarters of students in the Diploma Program are African-American or Latino, according to the University of Chicago study. “Equity has been baked into the process for IB expansion at every step,” says Kyle Westbrook, executive director of the nonprofit Partnership for College Completion and formerly the executive director of Chicago schools’ Magnet, Gifted and IB programs.

One reason for that is the federal grants that have funded much of Chicago’s IB expansion are specifically geared toward desegregation. In 1980, when Lincoln Park High became the first Chicago high school to offer IB’s Diploma Program, the school was largely African-American and Latino, and IB was intended to diversify the student body by drawing in more white students from the then-gentrifying neighborhood.

(Lincoln Park looks very different now, whiter and wealthier, and in fact its IB program was left off the University of Chicago study because it differed from the city’s other IB high schools both in demographic composition and in its highly selective admissions process.)

The early anecdotal success of Lincoln Park’s IB graduates led then schools-chief Paul Vallas to expand IB in the 1998, adding Diploma Programs in neighborhood high schools around the city: Amundsen and Senn to the north; Prosser, Steinmetz and Taft to the northwest; Clark to the west; Curie, Hubbard and Kelly to the southwest; and Bronzeville and Hyde Park to the South.

A 2012 expansion spearheaded by Emanuel increased the number of Chicago high schools offering the Diploma Program (there are now 25), but focused on adding middle-school programs to elementary schools to better prepare students for entering the Diploma Program. But IB seats remain unevenly distributed across the city, despite the program’s aim. A regional report released by the district in August showed that the city’s West Side offers very few IB seats — a shortage made more glaring when Clark High in Austin shuttered its IB program in 2011.

One reason for the unevenness is school size. Clark, for example, has just over 500 students, whereas most IB high schools have more than 1,000. “The West Side of Chicago is still an area where there’s an opportunity, but there’s a challenge in terms of the numbers, because to really to make it cost effective, schools have to really be of a certain size,” said Westbrook.

Despite those regional gaps, the IB initiative is largely fulfilling its mission to bring a premium offering to neighborhood schools.

Latino students make up the largest single ethnic group within IB, and their experience within the program is different than that of African-Americans. Students from both groups enroll in ninth-grade IB classes in similar numbers, but Latinos are far more likely to enter the Diploma Program in 11th grade, according to the 2012 study.

One reason could be affinity with the curriculum: A 2015 doctoral dissertation by Chicago schools educator Sandra Arreguín found that Latino students were especially drawn to IB’s international focus. And Latino students are likely to have a leg up when it comes to IB’s emphasis on learning multiple languages. Senn High even offers a special track with a bilingual version of the IB Diploma.

“It helps close the achievement gap,” said IBO’s Campbell. “Instead of taking the advantage that these kids have and trying to put it aside, we take it and build on it.”

Can it last?

The addition of more early-years programs and establishment of IB feeder-school relationships like the one between Senn and Peirce open the door for parents to start their 3-year-old children on an IB track in hopes that — without leaving their neighborhood schools — the children will be prepared to thrive in a Diploma Program when they reach their junior year.

But that assumes that IB will still be around, which is hardly a given considering the program’s expense and the pending change in mayoral administration. Emanuel, an IB advocate, announced last month he won’t seek re-election. IB schools pay $11,650 each year to offer the Diploma Program, and slightly less to offer the Middle Years and Early Years Programs. That’s separate from the added faculty and faculty-training costs associated with IB, as well as the costs associated with IB testing.

“I’ve felt skeptical about IB’s long-term viability, because it’s expensive,” said Loyola’s Tocci. “When the district’s budgets were tight a few years ago, I expected IB would go on chopping block.”

Yet IB has plenty working in its favor, too. For one, educators such as Mehta say that developing an alternative, premium curriculum in house would likely be at least as expensive, and probably less effective. And the program has already survived several different administrations within Chicago schools, as well as two mayors.

“IB has been one of the only things that’s stuck around and withstood [the changes],” said Westbrook. “It would be hard for me to imagine the district unwinding that.”

Why Rahm Emanuel and his schools chief believe an elite curriculum can resuscitate neighborhood schools

2018-10-09T11:00:56+00:00

Chicago is doubling down on a big bet that the International Baccalaureate program can be boon to its struggling neighborhood schools. We asked Mayor Rahm Emanuel and schools chief Janice Jackson to explain their calculus in a recent joint interview. Here’s what they told Chalkbeat contributor Steve Hendershot.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Chalkbeat: Why does it make sense to you to expand IB’s presence in Chicago?

Janice Jackson: We’ve made investments in IB schools for a number of reasons: first, believing that schools need high-quality academic programs and a curriculum aligned to that, in order to really raise the bar for students and make sure that they are being presented with grade-level appropriate materials.

But in the case of IB, it’s rigorous and grade-level appropriate, but also takes a global look, which we think is one of the things that students should be focused on.

When we look at our metrics, we’ve already seen a dramatic improvement in schools that have a wall-to-wall IB program [offering only IB and not other curriculum], and we’ve seen that outlined in a few different ways at the high school level. It has resulted in higher graduation rates at some of our neighborhood schools that have adopted wall-to-wall programs.

And more important, at the elementary level, we’ve seen an improvement in standardized test scores for students that have access to a full IB program. So there’s demonstrated success that we can point to.

But the thing that I personally appreciate as an educator is the training that comes along with that. The teachers become a part of a network of highly accomplished teachers and they receive this training that is world-class. And then our students right here in Chicago and our neighborhoods get the benefit of that.

Rahm Emanuel: There’s two things I would say. One, for the parent’s side, what we’re trying to do is create what I call IB neighborhoods. So if you want to go to the Lincoln Park neighborhood or the Back of the Yards neighborhood, you can now go there and have your children in an IB literally from first grade to 12th grade, and there’s a continuum, there are feeder schools. Rather than parents moving out to the suburbs, they have one of the most sought-after academic programs. We have more people trying to apply, both principals and parents, to get the IB.

Second, I want to echo something Janice said and then underline it — the teachers love it because it frees them up to be the educators that they chose to be. The students get a rigorous education and the teachers get liberated to be educators. So that’s why I think it works.

Chalkbeat: That’s something I heard from IB’s parent organization as well — freedom from teaching to the test.

Emanuel: Listen, there’s a number of teachers I talk to regularly, and they’ll tell you that the moment their school went IB, the creative juices, the creativity, the collective energy that happened. It’s not an accident. Parents are flocking to it, parents are seeking it and principals get it because it sparks something. And then obviously our students are the beneficiaries of that.

The University of Chicago study from 2012 indicated that IB’s great postsecondary outcomes don’t depend on whether students actually earn the IB Diploma. Still, Chicago lags there — in the year of the study only 20 percent of CPS students earned the IB Diploma compared with 70 percent nationwide. Is that a number you’re focused on improving?

Jackson: Definitely the IB Diploma is the North Star. But if we could just take a step back, the plan that the mayor announced a couple of weeks ago around creating these IB programs which includes feeder schools that would feed into our high school programs is our effort to better prepare kids for the rigor of the IB program at the high school level.

So in many of our schools, when we launched, we started with the Middle Years Program, but now more and more we’re seeing the need to start at the primary level. So we’re looking to expose students a lot earlier, believing that that will make the IB diploma program more accessible to them.

Emanuel: I know a family with twins where one child got accepted to one of the top selective-enrollment schools in the city and the other one did not, but got accepted to the IB. They’ve now graduated. And first, the IB was more rigorous than the selective-enrollment academically. And second, both twins went to the University of Wisconsin and in their freshman year, the IB child was cruising.

I don’t want to over-color this because they’re both succeeding, but the adjustment to college was harder for the child who came out of one of the top selective-enrollment schools. That only underscores what the original U of C study in 2012 told us.

I want to underscore one other piece of data. When we started this, the goal was to make the International Baccalaureate not a backup to the selective enrollment, but a competitive, qualitative choice. In the district’s GoCPS enrollment portal, almost a quarter of the kids that got into our best selective-enrollment schools — 23 percent pick IB or artistic schools.

It’s becoming a true qualitative choice and competitor to the selective-enrollment schools. I think that’s good for the city. It’s good for parents, it’s good for the students and it picks up everybody else’s game.

Jackson: Let me add one thing from the teacher’s perspective. As we traveled throughout the city to host roundtables with teachers, [we heard that] teachers don’t want to spend a bunch of time developing curriculum, spending their whole weekend pulling out assessments and lessons for the students.

With the IB program, a lot of that work has been done for them. It’s research-based and it has a history of success, so it gives them more time to spend assessing their kids, working directly with them and allowing for that freedom and creativity, and we know all kids thrive in that type of an environment.

Chalkbeat: Do you think IB’s teacher training and framework pay dividends beyond the IB classes themselves? I’ve heard the idea that there’s a noticeable effect schoolwide.

Jackson: Yeah, it is definitely one of the outcomes. Because if you start with the Middle Years Program, if the teacher is implementing it with fidelity, they’re going to start to push on those intermediate grades and those primary grades to make sure that the students are prepared. And so it’s one of those cases where we raise the bar and students rise to the occasion, and it starts to really push throughout the building.

The other piece that I would say you really see in a lot of our schools with IB programs is that [students] are focused on global thinking. That’s something that all of us want our children to be thinking about, but quite frankly, it’s not happening in every single school. In our IB schools, the kids talk about not only their coursework and the content, but they talk about their place in the world, which I think is one of the unique features of the IB curriculum.

Chalkbeat: This is an interesting moment for IB within CPS because just as you’ve introduced the idea that a child can study IB from pre-K through the Diploma Program, the mayor — an IB champion — announces he’s leaving office. How can a parent because sure that IB will still be available 10 years down the road when their child is ready for the Diploma Program?

Emanuel: Two things. One, parents want it. Principals, teachers want it. We have basically 10 to 11 percent of the kids in CPS in IB. That’s a built-in constituency. Look, somebody else will have their own interests, et cetera, but I don’t believe they’re going to walk back from this because you have a built-in constituency of principals, teachers and parents who want this.

You’re going to have a fight on your hands. There’s plenty of fights to go around when you’re mayor, and you’ve got to pick the ones you want. This is not one I would recommend because I know the parents that are invested in this — and the teachers and the principals. There’d be holy hell to pay if you try to mess with it. Yeah. That’s the cleanest way I could say. And I think I know something about politics.

Jackson: I wholeheartedly agree with and support this approach. As long as I’m there, I’m going to continue to push for expansion and make sure this vision around these IB cluster neighborhoods comes to fruition.

I really do think if you look at the maps that we put out a couple of weeks ago and where we have added programs under Mayor Emanuel’s tenure, you can really see not only the expansion of programs, but really equity in distribution. We have prioritized some of our neighborhoods that needed this programmatic investment and the schools are better off as a result of this.

Chicago schools chief urges principals to apply for enrollment-boosting programs

2018-10-04T21:33:37+00:00

Schools chief Janice Jackson said Chicago principals have until Oct. 26 to draft letters of intent to apply for sought-after offerings for their local schools. These programs might include culinary, automotive, and language certifications or designations such as International Baccalaureate, magnet or gifted.

Jackson sent a letter Wednesday to principals and Local School Council members, saying that the decisions will be rooted, in part, by “demonstrable support of the school community” and how proposals “address programmatic gaps in their neighborhood.”

Her letter signals an effort by Chicago Public Schools to raise the profile of neighborhood schools that have been edged out by magnet, charter, and test-in programs. Chicago has been criticized for not having a fair and transparent process for deciding how schools earn such enrollment-boosting distinctions. It’s a particularly relevant issue now, with the city’s public school population declining, and many schools operating at a sliver of their capacity.

In an interesting twist, Jackson included in her letter a link to a newly released report compiled by a group called Kids First, which has its roots in a business community-backed pro-charter effort that worked in partnership with the district on the data.

The Kids First report “brings together data on seat quality, enrollment patterns, and programmatic offerings,” she wrote, “and presents a common set of facts that your school community can use to identify opportunities to address programmatic gaps.”

The report shows that, for example, the highest number of seats in the academically rigorous International Baccalaureate program can be found in the wealthy, predominately white and affluent North Side. In contrast, there are far fewer IB seats in predominantly black communities such as Englewood and Auburn Gresham and in the Latino community Back of the Yards.

At a press conference in September, Jackson said the report’s release should be viewed as a step forward in transparency. “From my time here, I’ve seen people ask the same questions over and over again. There’s been an ask around the district being more transparent, which I think is critically important. And as I stated, all of the data is publicly available.”

On Thursday, some community groups fired back with a letter of their own. They applauded Jackson’s effort to make the process more equitable, but they challenged the fact base established by the Kids First report, which uses school ratings to paint a picture of quality around the district.

“There are simply too many faulty assumptions and too many questions left unanswered,” wrote the leaders of the parents’ group Raise Your Hand, the neighborhood schools’ advocacy group Generation All, and the community organizing group Blocks Together.

In particular, these groups took issue with school ratings, which are based largely on attendance and test scores. “Research has shown that test scores and attendance tell us more about the socioeconomic status of the students’ communities rather than the teaching and learning inside the school itself,” they wrote. “When parents send their kids out the door in the morning or look for a kindergarten program for their kids, they are concerned with things well beyond whether everyone in the building is a good test taker.”

You can read their message in its entirety below.

Principals’ letters of intent are due at the end of October. The district will then evaluate proposals. Principals will be notified by Nov. 30 whether they’ve been invited to the next round, with the final decisions expected March 1, 2019. School visits and interviews of teachers, parents, and students will be part of the process, Jackson’s letter stated.

Chicago is sending more high schoolers to college — but how to get them to graduate?

2018-09-24T23:03:35+00:00

Senior Tanariya Thompson, 17, said she and her friends at Michele Clark Magnet High School are constantly asking each other about where they want to go to college. But they’re not just talking, they’re doing their research, too.

“In a lot of our seminar classes I see more kids on the computers applying for colleges instead of just sitting there looking or saying, ‘I ain’t going to college,’” she said. “We’re serious: We want to go to a college so we can become somebody. Next week, I will have my top three.”

Chicago Public Schools released data today showing that more students than ever before are enrolling in college. The mayor and district officials announced the encouraging figures on the West Side, at Michele Clark High School, where students said they’ve seen more energy, excitement and urgency among their peers around the idea of enrolling at college.

The data shows that 1,000 more Chicago Public School graduates from the Class of 2017 enrolled in college compared with 2016, a 4.8 percent increase and the biggest one-year jump in nearly a decade.

Chicago still has a problem with public school graduates staying in and completing college. In 2016, just 18 percent of ninth graders were projected to attain a bachelor’s degree within six years of high school graduation, and four-year college graduation rates have remained pretty stagnant since 2009, according to a fall 2017 report by the UChicago Consortium on School Research. (The report didn’t calculate two-year degree attainment).

But Mayor Rahm Emanuel called the latest enrollment data “an incredible statement about where Chicago Public School students are,” adding that nearly 90 percent of high school freshmen were on track for graduation.

“Every time they walk around and say, ‘not those kids, not from that school, not that background, not that ZIP code, not that family’ — you come here to Michele Clark and you tell these kids that,” Emanuel said, knocking on the wooden podium before him for emphasis. “You guys have proved them wrong every step of the way.”

From 2010 to 2017, the college enrollment rate increased from 53.7 percent to 64.6 percent, according to the school district. Officials credited everything from partnerships with OneGoal and other organizations focused on getting kids to and through college, to a summer text messaging campaign to nudge graduates toward completing action items along the enrollment path, and scholarships to city colleges for students who attain a B average or higher.

They also noted a shift in perspective.

“I think it’s because people have become more serious,” said Michele Clark Principal Charles Anderson. “I’ve seen it in action with people doing more college trips, people getting out to scholarship fairs, students having a different mindset.”

From 2016 to 2017, college enrollment rates for African-American and Latino students improved by 2.3 percentage points and 7.2 percentage points, respectively, according to the school district. The African-American college enrollment rate increased from 55.4 percent in 2016 to 57.7 in 2017, and the Hispanic college enrollment rate leaped from 59 percent in 2016 to 66.2 percent in 2017, according to district data.

Flanked by Chicago schools chief Janice Jackson and City Colleges Chancellor Juan Salgado, Emanuel said, “it used to be as a system, we were done just getting you to high school graduation, and our responsibility was over,” but now it’s different. The mayor added, “the biggest transformation is the mindset not just of our kids, but of the system.”

“It’s why we’re also making sure we set a goal that by 2019, every child has a plan for what comes next,” Emanuel said, alluding to a new CPS graduation requirement that demands every student “has a meaningful planning conversation with an adult, and graduates with a plan to map out their future.”

The data indicate more students are enrolling at City College of Chicago.

The district said 5.8 percent more students enrolled at city colleges in 2017 compared with the previous year. Of district graduates who attended two-year colleges in 2017, 84.5 percent enrolled at city colleges compared with 78.7 the previous year, according to the district. City Colleges Chancellor Juan Salgado praised the mayor and schools chief’s leadership, saying CPS’ gains were strong steps toward officials’ goals of “a more inclusive economy,” in Chicago.

“We also want to make sure that each of you has in a role in this economy, whether it’s downtown, or in our health-care centers, or at a logistics company, or engineering or manufacturing company or a tech company,” Salgado told the students. “This city will have a place for you.”

Officials said the climbing college enrollment rate mirrored the increasing number of district students earning high school diplomas, and also reflected district students’ overall strong academic progress. Yet the percent of students who enrolled in college in 2015 and were still enrolled the following year, 72.3 percent of graduates, is actually down slightly compared with 2010, when it was 72.8 percent.

That — and the low rates of Chicago Public School students who eventually graduate with a two- or four-year degree — are worrisome figures.

Furthermore, African-American and Latino students and students with disabilities still graduate from high school, enroll in and graduate from college at lower rates than the general population. It’s a sobering reminder of inequities in the school system.

Officials acknowledged that work remains to get more students to and through college.

That point that wasn’t lost on Michele Clark senior Naquanis Hughes, 17, who wants to study business in college but is still undecided on where. Hughes said staff, students, and even alumni offer this encouragement about getting through the hard knocks that some students encounter in higher education:

“If you come to a hard place, don’t just fall down, don’t just give up, keep pushing yourself.”

Hundreds of volunteers and vendors still under review in Chicago schools’ background checks, most teachers cleared

2018-09-21T22:15:41+00:00

Late Friday afternoon, Chicago schools released the climbing tally of employees who have cleared background checks — although hundreds of coaches, custodians, and volunteers remain under review.

The overwhelming majority of staffers — 99.14 percent — have passed, according to the district. But at least 13 people will lose their jobs because of the findings..

The district is still reviewing 107 coaches, out of 3,638, and 240 custodians out of 2,208 who work for private vendors.

When it comes to volunteers, the district checked the backgrounds of more than 8,059, and 403 have not been cleared. Volunteers who are in schools fewer than 10 hours a week do not have to undergo background checks, but principals have discretion to implement a stricter policy, the district said earlier this week.

Out of the district’s 20,413 teachers, 99 percent have cleared fingerprint-based background checks.

Starting this summer, Chicago Public Schools began doubling down on background rechecks and fingerprinting in the wake of a series of articles from the Chicago Tribune that exposed gaps in how the district handled allegations of student sexual misconduct at the hands of adults. The district announced several new policy changes and precautions before the start of school, including new trainings for staff, hiring for a 20-person Office of Student Protections and Title IX, and a districtwide poster campaign that spells out how to report suspected misconduct.

Earlier this week, the Chicago Sun-Times wrote that some nurses assigned to Chicago schools had been sidelined by background checks. Today’s updated count released by the district shows that only 20 nurse contractors, out of 416, remain in limbo.

The background checks have raised concerns among parents and community leaders who serve on Local School Councils. The district requires council members to undergo fingerprint-based background checks, and some undocumented parents are refusing. A letter of concern addressed to Mayor Rahm Emanuel and district leadership currently has attracted slightly more than 100 signatures.

The latest results provided by the district are below.

Chicago schools to expand IB programs in local schools in wake of critical report

2018-09-14T20:44:40+00:00

Chicago Public Schools is finally releasing to the public a controversial report that paints in stark detail how many students skip out on their neighborhood schools. The report was posted on the district’s website Friday as CEO Janice Jackson announced the district is coming up with more ways to make neighborhood schools competitive against popular selective-enrollment and magnet programs that siphon away families in many areas of the city.

Chicago schools plan to start by offering more schools support in applying for the International Baccalaureate designation. International Baccalaureate, or IB, is a rigorous curriculum that is akin to advanced-placement courses. Elementary schools can have IB designations and so can high schools.

This move is significant, because the report — which claims there are 150,000 vacancies in the system, a higher number than has been previously reported — shows that students in Chicago have unequal access to academic programs. By adding IB programs, and other popular offerings such as career and technical curricula, the district appears to finally be unveiling a neighborhood school strategy.

Open-enrollment schools should be a more “competitive choice,” Mayor Rahm Emanuel said at a press conference Friday at Fiske Elementary on Chicago’s South Side, where he announced the IB expansion. Emanuel said last week he will not seek a third term for mayor.

The controversial document, titled the Annual Regional Analysis, was created by Kids First, a school-choice group. Kids First, backed by the business community, previously was called New Schools Chicago and advocated for charter growth here.

The report has caused a stir among some community groups who’ve previewed it. Because the school district has used enrollment figures to justify closing schools, some people are worried the report’s numbers could be used to propose more closings, turnarounds, and charter schools.

After the press conference, Chicago schools CEO Janice Jackson said the report’s release should be viewed as a step forward in transparency. ”From my time here, I’ve seen people ask the same questions over and over again. There’s been an ask around the district being more transparent, which I think is critically important. And as I stated, all of the data is publicly available.”

“What I hope people will see is our culture,” added Jackson, who was named CEO in January, “and a difference in that we are starting this dialogue with them so they have all the information needed to help us make better decisions.”

Jackson used today to make the case to invest more broadly in IB programs, which the report shows are unevenly distributed. CPS currently has 56 IB schools: 22 of them are high schools, and 34 are elementary schools.

This map shows the number of IB program seats per 100 students available to elementary and high school students in each planning area.

The highest number of IB seats are in the wealthy, predominately white and affluent Greater Lincoln Park area, which includes the Near North Side, Lakeview, and Lincoln Park. In contrast, there are far fewer IB seats in predominantly black communities such as Englewood and Auburn Gresham, in the predominantly Latino Back of the Yards, and in the mostly black and Latino community of Ashburn. All of those communities are in the South Side planning region.

Principals have complained in the past that it was not clear how schools could apply for designations like IB. Jackson said today that the district is establishing a clearer application process for schools. Letters of intent will be due in October, and schools will be notified in the spring if they receive approval to pursue IB status.

Jackson said the point of releasing the report was to create a map for expanding such programs. “This is not about closing schools,” Jackson said. “My approach is simple — we have to start having honest conversations with community members and not making decisions for them.”

Kids First CEO Daniel Anello said in a statement that such conversations require a common research base. “We cannot improve schools if we don’t all have the same facts on school performance and access driving our collective efforts,” Anello said. “Positive change starts with transparency and a willingness to look at both our schools’ significant progress as well as where we still have room to improve.”

The teachers union has questioned the methodology used by Kids First to determine whether schools have empty seats. “In high school, where I taught for years, there’s a health center — several rooms that offer a really important service and make the school a nexus for keeping the school together,” CTU President Jesse Sharkey told Chalkbeat Chicago in an interview last week. “Does that count as an unused space because those are rooms that should be used for classes? That is not a fair way to look at it.”

At the press conference, Emanuel referenced first-of-its-kind data released in August from the district’s new GoCPS school-application portal. One surprising point in the data showed that 23 percent of high school students who were offered seats at both selective- enrollment and non-selective enrollment schools opted for the latter.

$40 million worth of school improvements follow in wake of Obama Center project

2018-09-12T01:13:44+00:00

Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson returned to her alma mater, Hyde Park Academy High School, on Tuesday to tout a $40 million investment into the historic school — a South Side neighborhood slated for a transformation that will be headlined by the Barack Obama Presidential Center.

“There are new things happening in this community with the Obama Library and we’re all excited about that, but we also want to respect the institutions that have been here educating kids for hundreds of years, and make sure that there’s a good synergy between the two,” Jackson said.

Jackson pointed to Hyde Park Academy as an example of performance gains at CPS schools: 92 percent of the academy’s freshman are on track to graduate, better than CPS’ systemwide average of 89.4 percent. That’s a promising sign for a school that has struggled to graduate its students. The school’s five-year graduation rate is 61.3 percent, well behind CPS’ 78.2 percent average.

Hyde Park is one of 22 Chicago high schools following the International Baccalaureate curriculum, equivalent in rigor to advanced-placement courses. Jackson said it was time to invest in the building “to make sure that the facilities match the academics in the hard work that’s happening in this school.”

Byron Brazier, pastor of the nearby Apostolic Church of God and one of the strongest community voices behind the investment, said the high school will play a crucial role in the neighborhood’s revitalization.

He sketched a vision for a community anchored by the Obama Center and the Museum of Science and Industry at its northern border, and by a planned Tiger Woods-designed golf course at the southern end, with the high school in the middle. Construction is slated to start next year on the Obama Center, but the project still faces challenges, including a lawsuit and federal reviews.

“If you have that kind of infrastructure, it’s just reasonable to say we have to invest in this high school,” Brazier said, also pointing to nearby, top-rated elementary schools John Fiske Elementary and Andrew Carnegie Elementary. “We require a [top-rated] high school to go along with that, so that Hyde Park becomes the school of choice for the residents of Woodlawn.”

Even as enrollment shrinks, the school district is pursuing an ambitious, $1 billion capital plan. Plans for new schools have stirred up heated controversy.

The renovations at Hyde Park Academy are underway, and one of the first finished projects is a revamped gymnasium. It serves as a symbol of the school’s revitalization, not only because the glistening new gym replaces one with peeling paint and holes in the wall, but also because gyms often are showcases for school spirit, according to physical education teacher Ralph Bennett.

“When you have school events, it makes kids feel so much better to go into a place that’s not raggedy, and that they can be proud of,” Bennett said.

Following lead of their tweeting CEO, Chicago schools take to social media

2018-09-10T08:00:15+00:00

You can frequently find Chicago schools CEO Janice Jackson on Twitter, where she promoted CPS’ back-to-school week— #CPSB2S, of course — by reminiscing about her own experiences as a student at Cook Elementary in Gresham.

With her 1,200-plus tweets and 5,500 followers, she far outpaces her predecessor, Forrest Claypool, who was not as active on social media.

Schools are following Jackson’s lead — some more enthusiastically than others. For teachers and administrators who embrace social media, it has become a crucial means of communicating with students and giving families a peek into the school’s hallways and classrooms.

At the individual school level, social media provides perhaps the greatest opportunity for community building, and several Chicago schools stood out in their efforts last week at using social media to ring in the new academic year:

Eric Solorio Academy High

Sure, social media is easier when there’s an obvious talking point or two, such as when Solorio teacher Robert Clarke was awarded the 2018 Yale Educator Award by Yale University last Tuesday, or when former President Barack Obama visited the Gage Park school the previous week.

But Solorio’s posts have covered the gamut, from music (its jazz ensemble performed at the Chicago Jazz Festival), to sports (linking to a Chicago Sun-Times profile of one of its football players, Messiah Travis), to a back-to-school meme from the movie “Pitch Perfect.”

Solorio’s accounts were active across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and to better reach its community, many of its Facebook posts were written in both English and Spanish.

Enjoying the smooth sounds of the #Solorio Jazz Ensemble at #ChicagoJazzFestival - definitely bringing some Latin Jazz flavor to the fest! pic.twitter.com/vpiJI6AFl4
— Principal@SolorioHS (@vicitur) September 1, 2018

Newton Bateman Elementary

The back-to-school posts from this Albany Park elementary school started early, with posts the week before school reopened depicting a staff outing, invitations to a meet-the-teachers event, and a map of the building.

Last week the content shifted to photos of school in session and of a “boohoo coffee” welcoming kindergarten parents to the Bateman family. In addition to its active Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts, Bateman also published an online newsletter Tuesday in conjunction with the first day of school.

Here’s what’s happening next week at Bateman! pic.twitter.com/QnLyfubBNe
— Bateman Elementary School (@BatemanES) September 8, 2018

Curie Metro High

The social-media impresarios at this far Southwest Side high school are masters of the art of overlaying digital text onto photographs, a tactic that both hints at the school’s visual-arts program and that Curie has employed often in welcoming the Condors back to campus. Hashtags are abundant (#committothecondor takes forever to type but is fun to say), and the back-to-school photos featured teacher-training sessions, a poetry lesson, and the mascot (yes, it’s a condor) standing at the front door welcoming students to campus.

Curie's new CTE pre-engineering program started off strong last week with our inquisitive students building structures and building community. #TheCurieWay #CurieCTE #condorpride pic.twitter.com/FEsxtDWCP8
— Curie Condors (@CurieHS) September 9, 2018

In addition to back-to-school fun, Curie used its three major platforms — Facebook, Twitter and Instagram — to share statistics touting its academic quality. Its Facebook page also helps alert students to opportunities such as Friday afternoon soccer tryouts.

Sullivan High

The Rogers Park high school dropped a slick video last Thursday entitled “Step Into Your Future” that highlighted its programs in areas such as business, fine arts and medicine.

A new school in Bronzeville says a lot about what parents want

2018-09-07T11:00:21+00:00

The first day of school, Nicole Spicer woke up at 4 a.m., put on a kelly-green blouse that matched her school colors, and was greeting new families at the door by 7:30 a.m.

By 9:30 a.m., the founding principal of the new Bronzeville Classical Elementary had run the school leadership gauntlet: encouraging her small cadre of teachers, welcoming jittery students and parents, and throwing an opening-day party complete with a balloon trellis and visits from such VIPs as Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago schools CEO Janice Jackson.

Her venti Starbucks coffee had long grown cold. So she headed to the teachers’ lounge to zap it in the microwave before embarking on another tour of the building, a former elementary school that closed under former schools chief Arne Duncan, reopened as a charter, then closed again.

In the school-choice era in Chicago, school buildings can have many incarnations, and 8 West Root Street’s latest says a lot about what parents in and around Bronzeville want. The only new selective enrollment school opening this year, it comes amid amped-up debate about the degree to which test-in schools pick off accelerated learners and middle-class families at the expense of neighborhood programs.

The debate recently has been stoked by reports that paint a never-before-seen picture of supply and demand in individual schools as well as the startling number of open seats in neighborhood schools.

Assistant principal Raven Talley and principal Nicole Spicer

A case study in what a school can look like with robust support, Bronzeville Classical’s deep bench consists of black religious and business leaders from the community around it. A multimillion gut rehab puts its facilities-wise on par with private schools — there are smart boards in classrooms, a new playground and turf area, even a donated pottery kiln. And the principal has ties with the historically black neighborhood, which still really matters in Chicago.

“Bronzeville has always been a part of who I am,” said Spicer, who grew up near 41st and Indiana streets and attended Catholic schools in the area, despite family who were alums of Phillips High School. “I couldn’t pass up this opportunity.”

The opportunity she’s describing is building a school from the ground up, from hiring the staff to prioritizing Spanish-language immersion and music theory to recruiting the students. Since the school was announced last December, Bronzeville Classical has enrolled 80 children in grades K through second, with plans to add a grade each year. It still has 100 students to go to reach its initial goal.

To recruit more families, Spicer is setting up her front office to help families navigate the selective-enrollment process, which includes completing a centralized online application and registering children for a testing appointment at a facility near IIT. There will also be orientations for prospective families, tours, a social media push, and workshops for families, said Assistant Principal Raven Talley. “When you walk into a school, you want to feel and see the community and the culture,” Talley said.

Not everyone who lives in the surrounding neighborhoods can attend the school, no matter the supports. That bothers public education organizers like Jitu Brown, the national director for the Journey for Justice Alliance. He has long encouraged CPS to stop segregating students by test scores and shower its neighborhood schools with the same resources and attention it gives new schools. “The rest of our babies are left to languish in neighborhood schools that are starved.”

In essence, other schools could use smart boards and Spanish immersion. A balloon trellis wouldn’t hurt.

The parent perspective

Brittany Smith, the parent of a first-grader at Bronzeville Classical, sympathizes with that argument. But, at 27, she’s part of a generation that came up in the choice era, traveling to a magnet school as an elementary student that was near the Indiana border and then attending Whitney Young, the city’s first public magnet high school.

In other words, “I’m used to the idea,” she said.

Smith lives in Bronzeville, just down the street from Ida B. Wells Preparatory, which reported an average kindergarten class size of 38 last year (the district average was 16.9, according to the 2017 Illinois School Report Card.) Put off by the class sizes, she tested her daughter and gained admission into a selective-enrollment school that was a 20-minute drive from her house. When she heard about Bronzeville Classical, which would be less than 5 minutes away, she applied. “I can tell there is a lot of support from the teachers and the principal, and it’s in the neighborhood.”

For many families, the decision to transfer to a new school with no record is not made lightly. There’s no word of mouth and no test score data to compare, though classical schools — which teach a grade level above, focus on language, and usually have strong art and music programs — are consistently among the district’s highest performing.

A gut rehab meant fresh new paint and lockers, but the marble staircase remains

A few days in, both Smith and another parent, Alicia Blais, who lives in McKinley Park, feel encouraged. Smith, who is black, appreciates the diversity of the school (numbers aren’t fully in, but an early measure shows the school at 50 percent black, 20 percent Asian, and 10 percent white, with a third of the students qualifying as low-income), the sparkling facility, and the fact that her daughter comes home happy.

Blais, who is white, says Spicer and her assistant principal are working with her to provide the right experience for her daughter, who is highly sensitive. Already, the first grader has really connected with the Spanish teacher. Calling it a “last stop” before moving to the suburbs, Blais said, “We are one of many parents who need this school to work.”

Design from the ground up

The siren call of a new school doesn’t just lure parents. Educators hear it, too. An award-winning reading specialist who formerly served as assistant principal at another classical school, Skinner North, Spicer participated in a highly competitive process for the principalship. It culminated with her speaking in a public forum last spring alongside another finalist.

After getting the job and taking what she describes as a “listening tour” of community organizations, she approached hiring her small staff with the same careful scrutiny: sorting through hundreds of applications to find a diverse roster of candidates. She opted for full-time music, PE, and Spanish in addition to her K-2 classroom teachers, special education teacher, and a counselor. In lieu of full-time art, a nonprofit group will come in and teach one day a week. (An alum of Golden Apple, the prestigious Illinois teacher training program, Spicer said three of her hires share those ties)

For Jessica Lyons, the Spanish teacher, who previously taught in a Catholic school, the chance to build curriculum from the ground up was persuasive. So was Spicer’s vision of earning a Seal of Biliteracy. For her, that means teaching classes completely in Spanish and cultivating a positive mindset around learning languages through books like “La Vaca Que Decía Oink,” about a cow that says oink. “I’ve designed Spanish programs at schools before, but this is an opportunity to really start something from the ground up and have ownership over it.”

Music teacher Reginald Spears has been working in Chicago schools for a decade, most recently at the nearby Doolittle Elementary. He brings with him a vision for a musical curriculum that prepares children for elementary band, or orchestra, complete with sight reading and songwriting. At some schools, music is viewed as a vehicle to teach reading or math, he explains — here, it’s a subject worthy of its own study and exploration.

He also brings training in calm classroom techniques, such as breathing and stretching, that he has shared with his fellow teachers. “I’m excited that this going to be part of the school.”

But despite the gleaming hallways and pottery kiln, Bronzeville Classical is still a public school in Chicago and can’t escape the realities of the district’s ongoing budget crunch. So Spears’ ambitions of a piano lab and a suite of shiny instruments might require some creativity. He plans to start the way teachers across the city do — a crowdsourcing page on the website Donors Choose.org.

What Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s decision to not seek re-election means for schools

2018-09-04T22:21:29+00:00

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s decision to drop his reelection bid has serious implications for several big public education initiatives in Chicago and for district leadership, from the membership of the appointed school board to the district’s handpicked CEO, Janice Jackson.

Emanuel announced he’s not seeking a third term Tuesday morning at City Hall. The news came just hours after he rang an opening-day bell at Bronzeville Classical, a new selective-enrollment school that opened on the former site of Hartigan Elementary.

Emanuel’s legacy is closely tied to schools, as his remarks Tuesday indicated. Ticking off his accomplishments, he said, “What matters most in public life is four more years for our children, not four more years for me.”

Since taking office in 2011, Emanuel’s public record on education has hit both highs and lows. He steered the system out of a $700 million budget deficit that fall, to a near-balanced budget this school year, all while extending the school day citywide, instituting full-day kindergarten, forging a better relationship between the public school district and City Colleges, and pushing for a universal pre-K plan — a $175 million, four-year undertaking that is in the initial rollout phase this fall.

Though universal pre-K has enjoyed bipartisan support in cities and states, his successor could presumably scuttle the early-stage effort, which builds upon funds from the federal government, the state, the city, and Chicago schools.

“It’s a significant expenditure, so it will and should be a topic of conversation,” said Robin Steans, the chair of the Steans Family Foundation and the former director of the education policy advocacy group Advance Illinois. (The foundation is a financial supporter of Chalkbeat.)

But, Steans added, the public is starting to understand that investments in early education could pay substantial dividends. “There’s no way you can look at the [kindergarten-readiness] data for Chicago or any other part of the state and think that our investment in early childhood is where it needs to be.”

Alongside Jackson, a former principal who took the top job in January, Emanuel has basked regularly in recognition from a Stanford University researcher, Sean Reardon, who issued a report last fall identifying Chicago as the fastest improving urban district in the country. But the mayor’s school policies also faced serious backlash, chief among them his decision, in 2013, to close 50 schools and displace more than 12,000 students amid declining enrollment. The mass closing was traumatic for neighborhoods, students, and teachers, according to a report released in May by the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research, and had at best a neutral impact on student achievement in some areas, and a negative impact in others.

And, after a revolving door of school district leaders with deep flaws — including Barbara Byrd-Bennett, who is now in federal prison — it took Emanuel nearly his entire tenure to find a school chief who had the respect of rank-and-file educators.

In Jackson, a former principal who served as No. 2 under another flawed chief, Forrest Claypool, the mayor found someone who could navigate the murky politics of a school-choice district, spar with a prickly union, and size up troubling gaps in equity and pledge ways to tackle them.

Even last week, the mayor referenced the Stanford report when joining Jackson at Josephine Locke Elementary, in the Montclare neighborhood, to announce slight gains in math on a standardized test known as the NWEA. Explaining the test scores, Jackson called him the “genius” behind many initiatives.

The respect has been mutual. But as mayoral appointees, Jackson and the school board she reports to are vulnerable now that the election has shifted. The Chicago Teachers Union lost no time Tuesday saying it would likely choose a candidate to back based on who’s willing to call for an elected school board.

It’s time to “let the people of the city of Chicago decide about school leadership,” said Jesse Sharkey, who will be confirmed as president of the union Wednesday.

He sidestepped the question of whether the union would support Jackson once Emanuel’s predecessor was in place. “Janice Jackson is an educator so in that regard there are things happening in schools that are just plain old common sense.” But, Sharkey added, “the bar has been set so low,” and an elected school board would be the first step to raising it.

Emanuel’s decision to drop out of the race for the February election does not mean there will necessarily be a change in CEO, said Steve Tozer, a recently retired professor who mentored Jackson at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s College of Education. He is the leader of several Illinois education policy initiatives.

“Any mayor will want the school system to succeed,” said Tozer, “and Janice [Jackson] is the best bet right now.”

“Count me among those who are nervous,” said Steans, about the potential for change at the top. “While there’s always room to improve and review is healthy, in a world where CPS has been making steady and significant gains over a sustained period of time, I worry about the disruption that comes with big changes.”

Peter Cunningham, who worked for former Chicago schools chief and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan both in Chicago and Washington, D.C., said that the local civic and philanthropic community generally supports Jackson, which makes replacing her a risky move for any new mayor. “We’ve never had a fully homegrown product of CPS — someone who is a parent, teacher, administrator, a former principal — runnings schools in the modern era.”

The district has enjoyed more financial stability this year, with principals receiving budgets in the spring and fewer layoffs. That stability comes despite several seismic policy changes in the wake of scandals involving special education and student sexual assault at the hands of adults.

When students returned to school Tuesday, they were greeted at some schools with posters near the front doors that spell out the district’s new procedures for reporting sexual misconduct.

Instability at the top of the district contributed to its lapse in handling student sex cases, according to a preliminary report released in August by former federal prosecutor Maggie Hickey. Regarding turnover of CEO and network chiefs, she wrote, “This turnover makes it difficult to instill and maintain productive policies and procedures, stable systems independent of any person, and cultures of compliance.”

Chicago graduation rates climb again, but district has ‘work to do’ to narrow racial gaps

2018-09-03T05:01:40+00:00

Graduation rates at Chicago schools continued to rise this past school year to reach what district officials described as a record high — but gaps separating students by race persist, and the district still significantly trails national averages.

The nation’s third largest district said 78.2 percent of students earned a high school diploma within five years — its preferred graduation rate yardstick — up from 77.5 percent in 2017.

The city’s graduation rate has shot up since Mayor Rahm Emanuel took office in 2011. That year, it stood at 57 percent. The pace of growth has slowed more recently, including this year.

Chicago highlights its five-year graduation rates — that is, the percentage of any given class that graduates within five years of entering high school. The national four-year graduation rate — without the extra year to finish school — was 84 percent for 2015-16, the most recent statistics available. Chicago’s four-year graduation rate was 75.6 percent this year.

Stubborn gaps separating student outcomes based on race remain — a challenge facing schools across the country. Those gaps narrowed in Chicago this year, driven in part by gains by black and Latino males, and a dip in the graduation rate for white students.

In raw numbers, 20,717 students graduated from Chicago high schools this year, a seven-year high. That compares with 18,446 in 2011, the district said. It’s a significant increase despite declining enrollment across Chicago schools.

“Today, three-fourths of students are leaving high school with a diploma,” Janice Jackson, CEO of Chicago Public Schools, said during a conference call Thursday with reporters reviewing the five-year graduation rate data. “We still have work to do to address the achievement gap, but we’re encouraged by the positive results.”

Since taking office, Emanuel has been hyper-focused on lifting graduation rates, setting an ambitious goal of an 85 percent graduation rate by 2019. Jackson, in the media call, said the district believes the 85 percent goal is obtainable.

Under Emanuel’s watch, Chicago Public Schools has expanded alternative crediting programs, or “options” schools, that help students finish their requirements online or at their own pace.

And it has doubled down on an innovative program to head high schoolers in the right direction. The program, incubated at the University of Chicago, assigns points for steady grades and attendance in the early years of high school. Each school has “freshmen on track” indicators that signal which students are at-risk and also which aspects of school might be causing students to drop out.

The district credited that program for helping boost the city’s once-dismal graduation statistics.

Among the notable trends in this year’s graduation data:

The graduation rate for black males was 64.7 percent, an increase of nearly 2 percentage points. The rate for black students overall grew just slightly more than half a percentage point, a markedly smaller gain than in recent years.
Latino boys’ graduation rates rose from 75.8 percent to 77.3 percent this year. All Latino students’ graduation rates edged up nearly one percentage point, to 81.6 percent.
Graduation rates for white students dipped for the first time during the Emanuel administration— from 88.3 percent to 86.2 percent.
Gaps separating white and black students’ rates declined, from 17 percent last year to 14.4 percent this year. There was a significant narrowing between white and Latino students, with the gap separating the groups falling from 7.6 percent to 4.6 percent.

Jackson acknowledged Chicago Public Schools’ need for improvement and continued support in the graduation rate for black and Latino males, and the need to keep up with the national growth in graduation figures. About 38 percent of Chicago students are African-American, “so that’s definitely an area where I want us to focus because I think we can make a lot of headway pushing on that demographic in particular,” she said.

Jackson, in her first year as CEO, said the district needs to make sure students get access to demanding academic programs, such as Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses, “because the research is clear that if students are engaged in high quality and rigorous coursework that challenges them, they’re more likely to finish school.”

The district has much work ahead to accomplish that goal. An unreleased report by a school choice group, a copy of which Chalkbeat obtained, showed vast disparities in the availability of high-demand programs based on race and geography.

Chicago’s graduation rate gains have come as national rates have risen. Nationally, the high school graduation rate from the 2015-2016 school year — the most current data published by the federal Department of Education — was 84 percent for the four-year adjusted cohort graduation rate.

Chicago’s 75.6 four-year graduation rate was comparable to New York City, the nation’s largest district, which graduated 74.3 percent of its students in four years, according to data from 2017, the most recent available.

After years of marked decline, the Chicago district’s dropout rate largely held steady compared with last year, at a shade below 19 percent, according to district data.

Jackson addressed skepticism of CPS figures, which in the past were revealed as inflated.

“The methodology for CPS has been under scrutiny for a long time, but our data has been cleared and substantiated by the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research and state of Illinois,” Jackson told reporters. “Both of those entities actually publish higher rates than what CPS publishes because we have refined our process to be as conservative as possible.”

Search and compare graduation rates at Chicago high schools by clicking in the box below:

Graphics by Samuel Park

Chicago schools start Tuesday, but 511 employees don’t have clearance yet

2018-09-02T19:36:57+00:00

With back to school right around the corner, the majority of Chicago schools’ 43,000 employees have cleared background re-checks, the district said Sunday. Still, 266 employees have not been cleared, and 57 of those employees are teachers.

As of Sunday, 98 percent of staff had been cleared to return to school. The employees who were not cleared were flagged because of something on their record suggesting a charge related to sexual misconduct, violence, or dangerous criminal activity.

“[Chicago Public Schools] will be conducting thorough investigations in all of these instances to better understand the circumstances of each unique case,” district spokesman Michael Passman said in a statement.

An additional 245 employees have not submitted their fingerprints to the district. They also are not permitted to teach.

Earlier this week, the district’s background checks temporarily snagged hundreds of employees. A Chicago Teachers Union spokeswoman said on Friday that the union had received dozens of calls from alarmed teachers who were not yet cleared to return to school, including teachers who had been arrested for a 2016 downtown protest of pension cuts. On Sunday, the district said teachers who had been flagged for charges related to protest or political activity were cleared.

In June, the Chicago Tribune released a series of stories revealing big gaps in how the district handled complaints of sexual misconduct against students by teachers, coaches, and other adults who work in schools. Scrambling to address systemic lapses, the district moved quickly to implement a series of new policies, including requiring all employees, vendors, and volunteers to complete background re-checks before the beginning of the new school year.

Chicago schools’ Chief Education Officer Janice Jackson said in an e-mailed letter to parents Sunday that the overwhelming majority of adults in schools are committed to keeping children safe, but “it’s the small minority of employees whose records require deeper inquiry (who) will receive the thorough review they deserve.”

The district also required all employees to re-submit fingerprints before the start of the school year. The district said that if employees go to work without having submitted their fingerprints, they will be disqualified from future employment with the district.

Former Assistant U.S. Attorney and Illinois Executive Inspector General Maggie Hickey has been hired by the district to review how it handles sexual misconduct cases. CPS released her preliminary findings in early August. “By conducting the background check refresh,” she wrote, “CPS has made significant progress toward ensuring that all adults working in schools have been background checked under uniform, rigorous standards.”

Chicago students show slight gains in math on national exam, while reading plateaus

2018-08-30T00:22:00+00:00

Chicago students showed small gains in math but saw scores flatline in reading, according to new test scores released Wednesday.

Chicago Public Schools officials cited the new scores, on a national test called NWEA that city students take each year, as evidence that the district’s efforts to boost math skills are paying off. A school’s NWEA scores determine a big part of its quality rating, meaning that a district’s top-rated schools generally have stronger scores. Click here to use our database and see how your school stacks up.

The latest scores are separate from Illinois state test results. But they matter a lot in Chicago, where they also factor into an eighth-grader’s admission score to selective enrollment high schools and other competitive programs. A boost now offers Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who is up for reelection, another data point to cite in his contested bid, adding to a recent study by a Stanford University researcher that identified Chicago as the fastest-improving urban district in the country.

Chicago schools CEO Janice Jackson

Announcing the scores at Josephine Locke Elementary in Montclare, on the Far West Side just over the border from suburban Elmwood Park, Emanuel said the city isn’t yet satisfied with how students are performing, but their long-term progress was worth celebrating.

“If you know anything about Chicago Public Schools, and the teachers and the principals throughout the system, nobody is spiking the ball at the 20-yard line,” said Emanuel, alongside Chicago schools CEO Janice Jackson. “But we should take note that, a short time ago, we were less than 50 percent of our kids reading or doing math at grade level or exceeding that.”

In reading, 61.4 percent of the district’s students in grades two through eight were on pace with their peers nationally or exceeding them, the same as in spring 2017. In math, 56.6 percent of students were on pace or exceeding it in spring 2018, compared to 55.9 percent the year prior.

In terms of how much progress students made over a single school year — their growth, in testing terms — 58.1 percent of Chicago students made the national average amount of progress in reading; 56.8 percent made the national average amount of progress in math.

Asked afterwards how specific groups of students performed, Jackson said half of black students in Chicago still aren’t achieving at grade level. When it comes to Latino learners, 61 percent met or exceeded grade level on the national assessment, compared to 86 percent of Asian students and 83.7 percent of whites. Latinos and African-American students make up the vast majority of the Chicago Public Schools population.

Jackson also said the district recognizes the stagnation, but the district has charged administrators with doing a better job by its black students this year. They’ve also worked to spread the word about the rollout of universal pre-K, which she believes will give children, particularly low-income ones, a stronger academic foundation.

“What got us to this point won’t get us to the next level,” she said.

Chicago schools administer the NWEA-MAP assessment in spring to second- through eighth-graders, with the option to use it as a midyear assessment. Many schools exercise this option so that teachers have a yardstick for student progress.

John Fitzpatrick, the principal at Locke, a pre-K-to-8 neighborhood school that is predominantly Latino, said he’s watched his school’s reading scores increase after putting new emphasis on reading, and math scores increase after focusing on math. This year, they used the assessment in first through eighth grade to tailor small group instruction in math, he said.

“So now we are trying to balance the whole thing,” he said. Still, scores don’t jump every year, he added.

“It’s like being on a diet and going on a scale — you can’t get frustrated. A couple of weeks you are going to stay the same. You just have to keep going.”

Here’s a closer look at Kids First Chicago, the group behind a report sparking debate

2018-08-24T14:43:51+00:00

In January 2017, Daniel Anello, the CEO of a school choice group backed by the business community, flew to Denver with Janice Jackson, who was then No. 2 at Chicago Public Schools.

The two leaders were there for a two-day trip to learn about Denver Public Schools’ universal enrollment application, something Chicago hoped to develop with help from Anello’s group. They toured schools, met with the head of the district, and had conversations with officials across departments. One element that kept coming up was a comprehensive report featuring where schools are, how they are performing, and how people choose among the options available.

The report “was indoctrinated into everything they did out there, whether you’re talking to teachers or community members of the finance department, they were all using the same sort of data,” Anello said. His group was already helping with enrollment, so it made sense they’d assist with analysis.

The trip spurred conversations about making similar information available to parents in Chicago schools, but it highlighted something else: the collaboration between Chicago schools leadership and Anello’s high-powered group, formerly known as New Schools for Chicago and now called Kids First Chicago. The more than decade-old partnership has both propelled a parent-choice agenda, spurred school openings and closings — and sparked bitter reaction.

These conversations are not just happening in Chicago. The Kids First philosophy — that the district should offer a menu of different schools, with families encouraged to choose among them — is consistent with the portfolio model approach, which has gained traction across the country and garnered backing from national funders.

By last fall, Kids First had a research agreement with the district to work with CPS’ demographics and planning department and compile a report, and, by January, Jackson had been named the district’s CEO. The report, which Kids First began previewing earlier this year to select community groups, shows the district has more than 150,000 empty seats, nearly 40 percent of them at top-rated schools. The report also indicates that black and Latino students are the most likely to attend the district’s lowest-rated schools, and shows broad swaths of the city lack some of CPS’ most in-demand academic programs.

The school district says the Kids First analysis is meant to help guide investments and empower communities to engage in conversations about their needs. Some community members agree, saying it offers an unprecedented window into the assets — and problems — in certain neighborhoods. But critics suggest it could be used to propose more school closings, turnarounds, and charter schools.

At Wednesday’s board of education meeting, Martin Ritter, an organizer with the Chicago Teachers Union, blasted Kids First for its “corporate interests” and backers, including many who don’t live in Chicago or don’t send their kids to Chicago public schools.

While the district did not release the report, Jackson said it’s not secret. And both district leadership and Anello said the report is not meant as justification for school closings.

“We did work in collaboration with Kids First. Our demographics team also played a role in compiling this report,” she said. She added that the district has shared it in dozens of meetings with over 105 organizations, including the Chicago Teachers Union and Raise Your Hand.

However, both the teachers union and Raise Your Hand have criticized the report and denied getting to preview it.

Kids First, meanwhile, is seeking to shed its reputation as a primarily pro-charter, politically connected group. Anello said the report is intended to provide parents data to make informed decisions around programs and schools. It’s a testament, he said, to how Kids First is trying to work differently.

Who is Kids First?

Kids First is one of at least five groups affiliated with an organization that has had a hand in shaping economic development and planning in Chicago since the early 20th century. The Commercial Club of Chicago’s clout-heavy membership includes 350 business and civic leaders, from Mayor Rahm Emanuel to corporate CEOs to the owners of the city’s major sports teams.

Commercial Club President Kelly Welsh, a Chicago attorney who served as general counsel of the U.S. Department of Commerce, said in an email statement that his group works with an array of public officials, not-for-profits, and other civic organizations. The goal, he wrote, is the “social and economic well-being of our region, including work on local and state education issues.” He did not elaborate.

Welsh sits on Kids First’s board along with former school board chief David Vitale, the head of Namaste Charter School Natalle Nerls, and others who have donated thousands of dollars to the mayor’s campaign coffers, including KPMG Managing Partner Patrick Canning and Exelon Chairman Emeritus John Rowe.

Kids First’s roots are with the Renaissance Schools Fund, a private group that helped fund and orchestrate Renaissance 2010. That plan hatched in 2004 under former Mayor Richard Daley and Chicago Schools then-CEO Arne Duncan with the mission of creating 100 new schools by the end of the decade.

The fund pumped tens of millions of dollars into new schools, the vast majority out of district control. However, by 2009, a report from the Consortium at the University of Chicago found little difference in the achievement of students at Renaissance schools compared with the schools they had come from, and media reports had characterized the effort as a wash.

In 2011, when Rahm Emanuel became mayor, the organization had changed its name to New Schools for Chicago. From 2004 to 2013, it helped fund 81 new schools, 68 of them charters, according to Anello.

“But then, the climate changed pretty dramatically,” he said. “During that period, the enrollment was declining, and we got to the place where there are far too many seats for the number of kids we have in the district.”

The organization went dormant in 2013, but was revived two years later under Anello. He is a former Unilever brand manager who, after training at the Broad Residency in Urban Education, signed on as chief strategist and marketer for the Chicago International Charter School network. He relaunched New Schools with a focus on helping parents. Universal high school enrollment seemed a great place to start.

“We’re really a different kind of organization now,” said Anello. “We’re pro-quality first and foremost — that includes high-quality charter schools like it includes high-quality traditional schools.”

Kids First’s funding sources, however, remain similar to before: a mix of foundations, private donors, board members, and businesses, including Northern Trust, BMO Harris, and ITW. The organization had an operating budget of about $4 million in 2016, according to the latest tax filing publicly available.

Why is the report up for debate?

The analysis in the Kids First report is mainly based off of public information, but it pulls from disparate datasets. The idea, Anello said, was to put together “a universal fact base” for the city around education and schools. “It’s actually something that is prototyped off of what we’ve also seen in other cities like Cleveland and Oakland.”

He characterized arguments about whether schools are run by the district, charter networks, or other entities, as “just a political fight.” He said the report is not intended to foreshadow any major district decisions like school closings.

But the reaction to the Kids First report serves as a reminder that the organization’s past could prove hard to shed.

Community groups like Blocks Together, Generation All, and Raise Your Hand have all expressed concerns about how CPS will use the data. Christine Geovanis, a spokeswoman for the Chicago Teachers Union, calls it a “powerful, politically connected proponent of charter expansion and school ‘choice.’”

“We can expect Rahm and his ‘choice’ cronies to try to spin these numbers,” she said, warning of charters, cuts, closures, and “more educational divestment in neighborhood public schools, which are sometimes the only civic anchors standing in chronically disinvested neighborhoods.”

Despite apprehension and criticism of the Kids First report, dubbed the Annual Regional Analysis, some community members say the numbers provide valuable insight for residents of the same South and West Side neighborhoods Geovanis referenced.

Austin resident Ronald Lawless, an education consultant and community organizer, saw a preview of the Annual Regional Analysis in the spring at a meeting at Michele Clark High School.

He found the information valuable, “because there’s a lot of misinformation about how well our schools are doing versus what people have heard.” The Kids First report divides the city into 16 planning regions, with detailed information about each area. The West Side region, which includes Austin, has about 29,000 unfilled seats, 10,000 of them at top-rated elementary schools. Only 39 percent of elementary students attend their zoned neighborhood school, according to the report.

Lawson was shocked to see how many unfilled top-rated schools were underenrolled, and how many West Side families were sending their kids to school in other areas despite the quality schools in their own community.

“We have some damn good schools,” Lawless said. “But there needs to be better marketing to ensure everyone in the community knows. There are empty seats because of the misconception and stigma that these schools are bad.”

Secret CPS report spotlights big vacancies, lopsided options for students

2018-08-18T00:06:54+00:00

An unreleased report by a school choice group backed by the business community paints in stark detail what many Chicagoans have known for years: that top academic schools are clustered in wealthier neighborhoods, and that fewer black and Latino students have access to those schools.

The report highlights startling figures: About 27 percent of black students are in the district’s lowest-rated schools, compared with 8 percent of Latino students and 3 percent of whites. It also says that while Chicago Public Schools has more than 150,000 unfilled seats, 40 percent, or 60,000 of them, are at top-ranked schools. That surplus will grow as enrollment, which has been plummeting for years, is projected to decline further by 5.1 percent over the next three years to about 350,000. What that means is the cash-strapped district is moving toward having nearly one extra seat for every two of its students.

The document effectively shows that, in many areas of the city, students are skipping out on nearby options, with less than half of district students attending their designated neighborhood schools.

In a city still reeling from the largest mass school closure in U.S. history, this report could lay groundwork for another round of difficult decisions.

The school district says the report will help inform how it invests in and engages with communities. Communities groups worry the document will be used to justify more school closings, turnarounds and charters.

The “Annual Regional Analysis” report, compiled by the group Kids First Chicago on CPS’ behalf, has been circulating among select community groups but has not been made public. It comes on the heels of a report showing students’ high school preferences vary with family income level. Students from low-income neighborhoods submit more applications than students from wealthier ones and apply in greater numbers for the district’s charter high schools.

The group behind the latest report has had many iterations: Kids First is a new name, but its origins date back to 2004, when it started as the charter fundraising group Renaissance Schools Fund. That was during the Renaissance 2010 effort, which seeded 100 new schools across the city, including many charters. The group changed its name to New Schools Chicago in 2011 and again rebranded this year as Kids First, with a greater focus on parent engagement and policy advocacy.

The report has caused a stir among some community groups who’ve seen it. Because the school district has used enrollment figures to justify closing schools, some people are worried it could be used to propose more closings, turnarounds, and charter schools.

“To me this is the new reason [for school closings],” said Carolina Gaeta, co-director of community group Blocks Together, which supports neighborhood schools. “Before it was academics, then it was utilization, now it’s going to be access and equity. Numbers can be used any way.”

In a statement on the report, Chicago Teachers Union Spokeswoman Christine Geovanis blasted Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration for policies that she alleged “undermine enrollment at neighborhood schools,” such as the proliferation of charter schools, school budget cuts, and building new schools over the objection of community members.

Reached by phone Thursday, Kids First CEO Daniel Anello confirmed that his organization helped put the report together, but declined to comment on its contents, deferring to the district. CPS Spokeswoman Emily Bolton acknowledged the report’s existence in a statement emailed to Chalkbeat Chicago that said the school district “is having conversations with communities to get input and inform decisions” about where to place particular academic programs. The statement said CPS is still in the process of drafting a final version of the document, but gave no timetable. Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office didn’t grant requests for interviews about the Annual Regional Analysis.

Below is a preview of the report provided to Chalkbeat Chicago.

Gaps in access to arts and IB programs

Data released this week from the district’s GoCPS universal high school application clearly shows what academic programs are most in demand: selective enrollment programs that require children to test in; arts programs; and career and technical education offerings, or CTE.

The Kids First’s analysis puts those findings into context, however, by detailing how supply is geographically uneven, especially when it comes to arts. Maps in the report divide the city into regions defined by the city’s planning department and show how highly-desirable arts programs are not spread equally throughout the city, and are most concentrated along the northern lakefront and downtown.

This map shows the number of fine & performing arts program seats available per 100 elementary school students in each planning area.

Worse, four regions offer 10 or fewer arts seats per 100 students, including the Bronzeville/South Lakefront region that includes neighborhoods such as Woodlawn, Kenwood, Hyde Park, Washington Park and Bronzeville. They are also scarce in the West Side region, which includes Austin, Humboldt Park and North Lawndale, in the Far Northwest neighborhoods of Belmont Cragin, Dunning, and Portage Park, and in the Northwest Side area, home to neighborhoods like West Ridge and Albany Park.

The report also shows an imbalance in the number of rigorous International Baccalaureate programs.

This map shows the number of IB program seats per 100 students available to elementary and high school students in each planning area.

When it comes to selective-enrollment elementary school programs such as gifted centers and classical schools, which require students to pass entrance exams, options tend to be concentrated, too, with fewer choices on the South and West sides of the city. This map shows where selective enrollment high school options are most prevalent:

This map shows the number of selective enrollment high school seats available per 100 students in the city’s planning regions.

STEM programs are more evenly distributed across Chicago than both IB and selective enrollment schools, yet whole swaths of the city lack them, especially on the South Side, including the Greater Stony Island region, which includes far South Side neighborhoods like Roseland, Chatham, Greater Grand Crossing and South Shore. As the other maps show, that region lacks most of the high-demand academic programs the district has to offer.

This map shows the number of STEM program seats available per 100 elementary school students.

Racial disparities in school quality

The analysis also shows disparities in quality of schools, not just variety.

At CPS, 65 percent of students districtwide are enrolled at Level 1-plus or Level 1-rated schools. But only 45 percent of black students and 72 percent of Latino students are in those top-rated seats, compared with 91 percent of white students.

The disparities are even more severe given that the school district is mostly Latino and black, with fewer than one in 10 students identified as white.

A page from a presentation of the Annual Regional Analysis showed to select community groups.

In the Greater Lincoln Park region, 100 percent of elementary schools have one of the top two ratings — the highest concentration of them in the city. The highest concentration of top-rated high school seats, 91 percent, is in the Central Area, which includes Downtown and the South Loop.

The lowest concentration of top-rated elementary seats, 35 percent, is in the Near West Side region, and the lowest concentration of high school seats, 14 percent, is in the West Side region.

Long commutes from some neighborhoods

The number of students choosing schools outside their neighborhood boundaries has increased in recent years.

But the report shows that school choice varies by race: 44 percent of black students attend their neighborhood elementary school, compared with 67 percent of Latino students, 69 percent of white students, and 66 percent of Asian students. For high schoolers, only 14 percent of black students attend their neighborhood school, compared with 28 percent of Asians, 30 percent of Latinos, and 32 percent of whites.

More students enrolling outside their neighborhood attendance boundaries means more and more students have longer commutes, but how far they travel depends on their address.

Again, this is an area where the Greater Stony Island area stands out.

A graphic from the Annual Regional Analysis executive report that shows how far elementary school students in each of the city’s 16 planning regions travel from their homes to school. The data shows that students on the South and West Sides tend to have longer commutes.

The average distance traveled for elementary school students is 1.5 miles — but K-8 students in Greater Stony Island travel an average of 2.6 miles. The average distance to class for high schoolers citywide is 2.6 miles, but students in the Greater Stony Island region travel an average of 5 miles, about twice the city average.

A graphic from the Annual Regional Analysis executive report that shows how far high school students in each of the city’s 16 planning regions travel from their homes to school. The data shows that students on the South and West Sides tend to have longer commutes.

Looking forward

The introduction to the Annual Regional Analysis describes it as “a common fact base” to understand the school landscape. It clearly states the intent of the report is to assist with district planning, not to provide recommendations.

It still bothers Wendy Katten, founder of Raise Your Hand, who has seen the report and said it tells little about how kids are actually learning at schools.

“It sounds like some data a company would use to reduce inventory at a manufacturing plant,” she said.

Gaete with Blocks Together said the numbers in the report are also missing important context about how the proliferation of charter schools, a lack of transparent and equitable planning, and a lack of support for neighborhood schools in recent decades has exacerbated school quality disparities across race and neighborhoods in Chicago, one of the nation’s most diverse but segregated cities.

It’s unclear when the final study will be published, or how exactly the school district will use its contents to inform its decisions and conversations with communities.

But an event posting on the website for Forefront, a membership association for “nonprofits, grantmakers, public agencies, advisors, and our allies,” mentions a briefing for the report on Oct. 10.

Kids First Chicago CEO Dan Anello and CPS Director of Strategy Sadie Stockdale Jefferson will share the report there, according to the website.

New data pulls back curtain on Chicago’s high school admissions derby

2018-08-16T05:01:10+00:00

Before the online portal GoCPS system streamlined the high school choice process, Chicago schools lacked a common deadline or single place portal to submit applications. Some students would receive several acceptances, and others would get none. But a new report shows that the new, one-stop application system is working as intended, with the majority of students ultimately getting one of their top three choices.

But the study, released Thursday by the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research and the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, also lays bare a major problem with which the city’s public schools must wrangle: There are too many empty seats in high schools.

And it shows that demand varies by income level, with students from low-income neighborhoods casting more applications than students from wealthier ones and applying in greater numbers for the district’s charter high schools. Click here to search our database and see demand by individual school.

The report leaves unanswered some key questions, too, including how choice impacts neighborhood high schools and whether a streamlined application process means that more students will stick with their choice school until graduation.

Deployed for the first time in advance of the 2018-2019 school year, the GoCPS system let students rank up to 20 choices from among 250 programs in 132 high schools. Separately, applicants can also apply to, and rank, the city’s 11 in-demand selective enrollment programs through the GoCPS portal.

The data paints a never-before-seen picture of supply and demand for seats at various high school programs across Chicago Public Schools. One in five high school options is so popular that there are 10 applicants for every seat, while 8 percent of programs fall short of receiving enough applications, according to the report.

CPS CEO Janice Jackson said the new data presents a full, centralized inventory and will help the district “have the kind of conversations we need to have” with communities. The district is facing pressure from community groups to stop its practice of shuttering under-enrolled schools. Asked about what kind of impact the report might have on that decision-making, Jackson said that “part of my leadership is to make sure that we’re more transparent as a district and that we have a single set of facts on these issues.”

As for declines in student enrollment in Chicago, “that’s no secret,” she said. “I think that sometimes, when when we’re talking about school choice patterns and how parents make decisions, we all make assumptions how those decisions get made,” Jackson said. “This data is going to help make that more clear.”

Beyond selective enrollment high schools, the data spotlights the district’s most sought-after choice programs, including career and technical education programs, arts programs, and schools with the highest ratings: Level 1-plus and Level 1.

“What that says to me is that we’re doing a much better job offering things outside of the selective schools,” said Jackson, who pointed out that 23 percent of students who were offered seats at both selective enrollment and non-selective enrollment schools opted for the latter.

“Those [selective] schools are great options and we believe in them, but we also know that we have high-quality schools that are open enrollment,” she said.

Programs in low demand were more likely to be general education and military programs; programs that base admissions on lotteries with eligibility requirements; and programs located in schools with low ratings.

Other findings:

Chicago has far more high school seats than students — a dynamic that’s been clear for years and that the report’s authors stress is not interfering with the admissions process. About 20,000 freshman seats remain unfilled across CPS for the upcoming school year. At least 13,000 of those empty seats are a consequence of plummeting enrollment at CPS.
It’s still not clear how neighborhood schools, which guarantee admission to students who live within their boundaries, affect demand. About 7,000 students are expected to enroll at their neighborhood high schools. When CPS conducts its 20th day count of enrollment at district schools, more complete details will be available. Lisa Barrow, a senior economist and research advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, said one of the things researchers weren’t able to dig into is the demand for neighborhood programs, because students didn’t have to rank their neighborhood schools.
The report suggests that the process would be more streamlined if students could rank selective enrollment programs along with other options. “If students received only one offer, there would be less need to adjust the number of offers to hit an ideal program size,” the report says.
Students don’t participate in the new process evenly. The report shows that students from low-income neighborhoods were more likely to rank an average of 11.7 programs, while students from the wealthiest neighborhoods ranked an average of 7.3. The authors said it was not clear whether that meant students from wealthier neighborhoods were more willing to fall back on their neighborhood schools.
Students from the city’s lowest-income neighborhoods were also more likely to rank a charter school as their top choice (29 percent), compared to students from the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods (10 percent). The same was true of low academic performers (12 percent), who chose charter schools at a percentage considerably higher than their high-performing peers (12 percent).
While the new admissions process folded dozens of school-by-school applications into one system, it didn’t change the fact that schools admit students according to a wide range of criteria. That means the system continues to favor students who can navigate a complicated process – likely ones whose families have the time and language skills to be closely involved.

Barrow, the researcher from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, said one final question the report cannot answer is whether better matching students with high schools on the front end increases the chance that they stick around where they enroll as freshmen.

“If indeed they are getting better matches for high schools,” Barrow said, “then I would expect that might show up in lower mobility rates for students, so they are more likely to stay at their school and not transfer out.”

This story has been updated to reflect that the excess capacity in Chicago high schools does not interfere with the admissions process.

New high school plan still has some South Side residents feeling neglected

2018-08-08T04:54:11+00:00

New proposed boundaries for Near South High School has garnered praise from some community members. But not everybody looks at the map and feels like a winner.

That much was clear Tuesday night during a Chicago Public Schools public hearing about the attendance boundaries at Second Presbyterian Church in the South Loop.

Some 100 people filled the pews. They included Gap community residents praising their inclusion in the high school’s updated boundaries, which they pushed for at a CPS hearing last month. But supporters of National Teachers Academy blasted the planned school for displacing their top-rated, predominantly black elementary school near the corner of State Street and Cermak Road. They accused CPS of discriminating against the school, exacerbating gentrification, and of trying to divide the black community by adding the Gap community to the new high school’s attendance area.

“Let’s not let them divide us, because together we stand, and divided we fall,” said Olivia Shelton, the grandmother of an NTA student. “We must all stand together for our children.”

Others whose children could attend the new high school praised the plan.

“I support the boundaries because I believe our community believes in CPS,” said Gap resident Kevin Stanciel, citing his family’s positive experiences with schools like Whitney Young, Disney, and Alcott and thanking the school district for including his community in the Near South High School attendance area.

But residents of Bridgeport, Canaryville, and Armor Square felt left out of the plan.

Proposed boundaries for Near South High School. Families living in boundaries for Armor and Holden Elementary schools will receive preference for available seats, according to CPS.

Principal Katherine Chuu noted that her students from Armor Elementary School would receive preference for unfilled seats at the new high school, but wouldn’t be guaranteed admission.

Like others in the cluster of South Side neighborhoods, she said area elementary school students need options for quality neighborhood high schools when they graduate. Parents and community members said that existing high schools weren’t acceptable choices.

What about Phillips and Tilden?

Some speakers during the public comment period defended two existing neighborhood high schools that could be affected by a new building in their enrollment area.

Audrey Johnson, the mother of a recent Phillips Academy High School grad, said the Near South High School will eat into the attendance area for Phillips, a Level 2 school already struggling to attract students and investment from CPS. Phillips has an ideal capacity for 2,000 students, but only has 630 students, most black and from low-income households, according to CPS. In 2017, the latest year for which numbers available, about 60 percent of Phillips’ seniors graduated, compared with the district average of 74 percent.

Johnson said the school suffers from a bad reputation and is avoided by middle-class and non-black families — but that it has made strides and needs more investment in academics like world languages to draw in more students.

“Don’t fail us like that,” she told the school board. “Put some money in Phillips.”

She wasn’t alone in speaking out for under-enrolled neighborhood high schools. She was joined by Ald. Patrick D. Thompson, whose ward includes parts of Bridgeport, Armour Square, and Canaryville, which borders Tilden Career Community Academy High School. Tilden’s student body is black and Latino, mostly students from low-income households, and about half of its senior class graduated in 2017, according to CPS.

Thompson said Tilden is woefully under-enrolled, with about 250 students in a building that could hold 2,000. Yet, the Near South High School could further erode Tilden’s student body, he said.

“[The boundaries] are not helping everybody, and in fact it’s hurting kids more than it’s helping,” he said.”All of us are asking CPS to take a look at these boundaries again.”

CPS maintains that it has tried its best to respond to the area’s call for a high-quality high school, and a spokesman said CPS would continue working with the community “to ensure the new school meets the needs of all local families.”

Neighbors at odds heading into Near South High School hearing

2018-08-06T20:35:50+00:00

On Tuesday, Near South Side residents divided over the opening of a high school on the site of a popular elementary school have a chance to let district officials know how they feel about new attendance boundaries.

The 1,200 student Near South High School would open for the 2019-20 school year by the corner of State Street and Cermak Road, displacing National Teachers Academy, a top-ranked, mostly African-American elementary school whose supporters recently sued to halt Chicago Public Schools’ plans. The lawsuit alleges that the decision to close NTA violates the Illinois Civil Rights Act.

Members of the Gap community, a northeastern stretch of Bronzeville, had been left out of the proposed high school plan. But on Friday, CPS released an updated boundary map that included the attendance area for Pershing Elementary School, a neighborhood school serving Gap families.

“We’re pleased that they’ve listened to our outcry that we wanted to be included,” said Leonard McGee, president of the GAP Community Organization, which supports the new high school. “We’re still pushing until the board vote is done; anything can happen, we’re not resting on our laurels thinking it’s a done deal.”

He said his organization was “petitioning for children who aren’t even born, for kids who don’t even live in the area yet.”

“We’re looking at this high school as an opportunity for kids who aren’t even born yet to have access to a quality education, and that’s all it’s about,” he said, adding that the school would provide a high-quality option in a racially integrated setting.

At a public hearing last month, residents griped that the school would only serve 1,200 students, saying the need was greater and expressing fears of overcrowding. In a statement emailed to Chalkbeat Chicago, CPS said it determined that the boundary changes could be done without risking overcrowding. CPS spokesman Michael Passman said families “in the Near South Community,” have wanted a high-quality high school for years, and that the district is focused on opening the new high school to as many families as possible.

“We are pleased to be able to provide more Near South families with guaranteed access to a high-quality continuum of schools from pre-K through high school, and we look forward to continuing to work with the community to ensure the new school meets the needs of all local families,” Passman said.

But the boundary change doesn’t satisfy National Teachers Academy parents who are suing the district to stop the school’s closure, said Elisabeth Greer, chair of the academy’s Local School Council and the parent of two students at the school.

Proposed boundaries for Near South High School. Families living in boundaries for Armor and Holden Elementary schools will receive preference for available seats, according to CPS.

Greer called the new boundaries “CPS’ sad attempt to try to garner more support for this plan” among black parents on the Near South Side.

“This is a decision by CPS to listen to some voices in the community but not others,” Greer said, claiming that the “thousands” who support keeping National Teachers Academy open dwarf neighborhood proponents of the new high school. “This is what CPS does, pit communities against each other. It’s been primarily African-Americans who have stood up against this plan, and this is an attempt to split the black community and get some African-Americans to [support CPS].”

McGee disagreed, characterizing Greer’s statement as “trying to divide the community itself.”

“I’m not getting into why CPS did what they did,” he said. “I’m only advocating for what’s a good educational opportunity for people in the neighborhood.”

But, Greer wants to be clear: “We are not at war with each other in the community.”

“We don’t plan to go in tomorrow night and be angry with the Gap community, we’re going to be there to talk to our neighbors,” she said. “We shouldn’t be fighting over scraps, we should be demanding that our community deserves something bigger and better like a new high school from the ground up.”

While Leonard also said he’d be at the meeting to hear from other concerned community members, he takes issue with Greer’s framing, particularly the word “scraps.”

“Let me have my scraps, and let me decide the value of them,” he said. “In fact, to say that is an insult to me and my community.”

Last month at a public hearing, National Teachers Academy supporters spoke against the project, while residents of Chinatown spoke in favor, arguing that they’ve pushed the district for years for an open-enrollment high school in the area and expressing concerns about the quality and safety of current neighborhood schools.

But at the Chicago Board of Education meeting on July 23, at least one Chinatown community leader blasted CPS.Debbie Liu of the Coalition for a Better Chinese American Community mentioned Chinatown’s long history of advocating for a high school, but said CPS has gone about meeting those demands the wrong way.

“A 1,200-student capacity is only a stopgap measure compared to projected growth in Chinatown and nearby communities,” she said. “The turmoil we have in the Near South could have been prevented with a more transparent, long-term, equitable planning process.”

Some of the areas zoned for the new high school currently feed Phillips High School, which is under-enrolled, according to CPS.

Community residents will have a chance to chime in about the updated boundary on Tuesday, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., at the Second Presbyterian Church, 1936 S. Michigan Ave.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel is on a high-speed timeline for his universal pre-K rollout

2018-08-02T18:55:44+00:00

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has clearly articulated his vision for a free, universal prekindergarten program for 4-year-olds in Chicago, staging events throughout the summer to spread the word. On Thursday the mayor stood at a playground to announce the expansion of an early childhood program at Passages Charter School in Edgewater.

The announcement coincided with a data release today by Chicago Public Schools that shows promising early results from its preschool programming. Third-graders who attended CPS-run prekindergarten in 2012-2013 showed slightly higher GPAs (of 0.09), better attendance (by approximately 1.6 days), and a 3 percentile point increase in math and reading scores on the national NWEA exam compared with children with no known pre-K education.

“As an educator, I know that nothing is more important than getting kids into school earlier,” said Chicago schools CEO Janice Jackson, referencing the results today.

Passages Charter, which is operated by Asian Human Services, will more than double capacity in its early-childhood program by September, going from two preschool classrooms that each serve 20 students to five that serve up to 100. The center will also include a family room where parents — many of whom are refugees — can learn English and help each other navigate life in a new country. Passages already runs a similar program in the West Ridge neighborhood, near the intersection of Peterson and California, said Cindy La, director of education for Asian Human Services.

“We’re teaching them English, but we’re also talking about what it means to go to the doctor, or go to the post office. Even things like over-the-counter medications can be unfamiliar,” said La. Having the parents in the same building as the children helps provide support for the whole family and reinforce education in multiple generations.

Her boss, Asian Human Services CEO Craig Maki, made a similar point. “We want to make the building a community building where we take care of families.”

The announcement tour highlights what makes the mayor’s pre-K plan so intriguing — and complicated: the constellation of providers the city must lean on to offer universal pre-K for all 4-year-olds regardless of their family income, a goal Emanuel aims to reach by 2021. All in, the program will cost $175 million. Walls are being knocked down to build capacity at neighborhood schools like Lazaro Cardenas Elementary in Little Village and Dore Elementary in Clearing as well as charters such as Passages.

The city also is doling out grants to expand capacity at community-run centers such as Gads Hill Center in Brighton Park and small businesses, such as Little Angels Learning Center in Englewood. Some of the spending for pre-K construction and expansion projects will be funded by the new $1 billion capital budget that the Board of Education passed in July.

Phase one of the pre-K rollout starts this fall, with the city promising spots for 3,700 additional children from families that make less than $46,000 through a menu of programs housed at traditional CPS schools, charters, and community centers. Ultimately, parents who apply for the spots can fill out one application and find a menu of options depending on where they live. The common application is open on a City of Chicago-run early learning portal, but it is several pages long and can be confusing in parts. There’s more work to be done to streamline it and make it easier for families, said Samantha Aigner-Treworgy, the mayor’s chief of early learning.

La, of Passages, said some families were not comfortable using the online portal yet, so they had received 45 paper applications for their expansion spots this fall. Currently, their program serves 3- and 4-year-olds: some spots are free and funded by Head Start, others are funded by a matching state grant and on a sliding fee scale. The most any family pays is $350 per month.

The timeline to be ready by the time classes resume in September is so tight that, at Passages, the construction workers were already at work before the morning press conference started. They paused in the parking lot to wave attendees to a tiny playlot behind the school and started up their drills and saws again as soon as the crowd began to disperse. A fixture in the neighborhood, the stately brick building at the corner of Bryn Mawr and Ashland avenues once housed the city’s first coed Catholic high school, St. Gregory the Great High School, before the Archdiocese of Chicago closed it in 2013.

Chicago schools pass $7.5 billion budget despite calls to halt vote

2018-07-25T22:48:41+00:00

On Wednesday, the Chicago Board of Education voted to pass Chicago Public Schools’ $7.5 billion budget for the 2018-2019 school year, despite calls from parents, students, activists, and community organizations to halt the vote.

The budget encompasses a $5.98 billion operating plan that charts out spending on schools and central office administration, plus a $1 billion capital proposal that relies heavily on bonds to fund building repairs and upgrades, updated science labs, new annexes, and new schools. The remainder includes $600 million to pay down the district’s $8 billion debt load. Chalkbeat Chicago broke down the total budget here and analyzed the tension between overall declining enrollment and new school investment here.

The district has touted its $5.98 billion operations budget as good news and a sign of CPS’ improving fiscal health. It includes 5 percent more funds thanks to a revamp of the state’s school funding formula and an increase from local tax revenue, and $60 million more pumped into schools compared with last year’s budget.

School district officials at a meeting Wednesday said the budget was a step in the right direction. “We believe these capital investments promote equity throughout the district,” Jackson said.

Of the 60 scheduled speakers for public comment at the hearing, about one-third signed up to speak about budget topics or CPS’ financial decision-making in general.

Jose Requena, a parent at Richard Edwards Elementary School in Archer Heights, said that his school received an annex in 2016, but only through intense political pressure from Ald. Ed Burke. He called for the board to pump breaks on the budget vote.

“These budgets are political budgets,” he said.

Christine Dussault, a teacher at Chase Elementary School in Logan Square, said her school suffers from a leaky roof and malfunctioning heating and air conditioning systems.

“These circumstances make it extremely hard to provide a world-class education that we’re committed to providing,” she said, noting how when she attended last week’s capital budget hearing at Truman College, she was “overwhelmed by story after story that were similar to how I was feeling about my own school.”

Dussault said she’d like to see a more “transparent, fair, and equitable process” moving forward.

Board Vice President Jaime Guzman said that the district does “have dollars to do things here, but it’s never enough.” One of the main takeaways he got from Wednesday’s meeting was that people were frustrated with “opaque decision-making.”

“I know it’s complicated from funding strains and needs,” he said, “but I just want us to think clearly about how we can be more transparent with folks.”

The board voted unanimously to pass the budget.

To read more budget analysis from Chalkbeat Chicago, click here to find out about the district’s new chief equity officer and click here to read about the district’s investment in classical education.

Here’s some advice for CPS’ future Chief Equity Officer in year one

2018-07-24T17:21:54+00:00

When a small group of central office staff met earlier this year at Chicago Public Schools headquarters to discuss a grant, the conversation went from how the district could support students’ social and emotional development to a bigger discussion about the world children are growing up in. CPS CEO Janice Jackson said the talks inside district headquarters at 42 W. Madison St. soon “blossomed into a full blown commitment around race and equity.”

On Wednesday, the Chicago Board of Education is expected to vote on CPS’ 2018-19 budget, which lists a new four-person Office of Equity as a $1 million line item. The board also plans to vote on a proposed revision to its student code of conduct to help address racial disparities in suspensions.

Equity officers are a small but growing cadre of school administrators working on diversity and inclusion. Districts in Los Angeles and New York don’t yet have a cabinet-level official who reports directly to the schools chief. But smaller urban districts like Jefferson County Public Schools, in Kentucky, and the Oakland Unified School District, have been doing the work for years.

“This is a good start, we’re excited about the direction we’re going in,” Jackson said.

In a racially equitable school, all students would get what they need to be successful, and race wouldn’t predict any child’s success or outcome. But how does a chief equity officer go about digging out so many deep-rooted problems at CPS?

In Chicago, one of America’s most diverse — and segregated — cities, few institutions illustrate racial inequity like the public school system. About 90 percent of CPS students are of color, but half of all teachers are white. White students, most of whom live on the North Side, comprise just 10 percent of students but are nearly all clustered at top rated schools (Level 1+ and Level 1). Black and Latino students, who are concentrated on the city’s South and West sides, also trail their white peers when it comes to test scores and college readiness.

This chart shows the “racial achievement gap” or “opportunity gap” in composite state standardized test scores.

The consequences of racial inequity in schools can follow students their entire lives. Jackson knows that all too well. She grew up on the South Side of Chicago, graduated from public schools, and returned as a teacher and principal.

Now chief of the district, Jackson said the equity chief’s primary focus in year one would be bridging gaps in test scores between black and Latino students and their white peers. “All tides are rising,” she said, citing academic growth at the district, “but the achievement gap still exists.” And while she said it’s too early to pinpoint every equity goal and standard, Jackson detailed some initiatives the new official would work on, starting with diversifying CPS’ workforce, ensuring resources are distributed equitably across the district, and supporting CPS efforts to award more contracts to minority- and woman-owned businesses.

To better understand what a chief equity office could look like, Chalkbeat interviewed school equity experts in several areas. While no school district has eradicated the problem, a savvy equity chief is starting to make a major difference in some cities.

Lessons from the Bluegrass State

Chief Equity Officer John Marshall with students at Mill Creek Elementary’s student Leadership Academy convocation.

John Marshall grew up in a family of educators and attended failing schools in Louisville, Kentucky. After a high school suspension he felt was unfair, he vowed at a school disciplinary hearing to one day change the school system from the inside. Today, he’s the chief equity officer at Jefferson County Schools, which encompasses Louisville and is Kentucky’s largest district with more than 100,000 students, about 46 percent white and 37 percent African-American.

He said that a $3.6 million budget his office assesses the practices, policies, and behaviors of the school system, with a focus on access to academic programs, teacher recruitment, discipline and student achievement. He has spearheaded the creation of an equity institute to train employees and provide professional development. Last year, the school board approved creating a school for men of color with lessons taught “from an Afrocentric lens,” rather than the Eurocentric instruction prevalent at many American schools.

Marshall has some tips for CPS CEO Jackson as she seeks a chief equity officer: choose somebody who is organized, data-driven, research focused, and who understands the business of public education. That means not just hiring a bureaucrat, business person, or political operative — but snagging a candidate with experience teaching at and leading schools.

It’s also important to hire a person who can build bridges between the administration and community groups and enlist help in building momentum for racial equity work. And, he said, it wouldn’t hurt to have candidates who have experience in the same school district they hope to improve.

“Do you need them to be from Chi-Town? Not really, but it’s helped me being from Kentucky,” he said.

One of the most vital qualities a chief equity officer should have, Marshall said, is a deep understanding of race and history. Tackling racial inequity means wrestling with the legacies of colonialism, slavery, and racial discrimination.

“What [equity officers] have to do is look at the system as not broken,” Marshall said, “but as doing what it’s created to do.”

Year one: a scorecard

When Marshall was hired in 2012, he said he focused on creating an equity scorecard loaded with critical data that grades the district via four metrics: literacy, college-and-career readiness, school climate and culture, and discipline. He said the data has helped focus the community conversation and strengthened efforts to improve outcomes for certain students. For example: The district saw some increases in the number of low-income students considered to be college and career ready between 2013 and 2016.

The data-laden equity scorecard has been a powerful guide in other ways, too.

For instance, Marshall said that his office recognized that students of color were being suspended at a disproportionately high rate. He worked with community groups to come up with a remedy, redefining the categories of conduct that were generating suspensions, namely, disruptive behavior. “This subjective infraction was being given to black males of color in alarming and disproportionate ways,” he said.

The disparities in discipline he mentioned are also a problem in Chicago. While the district has revised its suspensions policy and seen a steep decline since 2012, black boys are still the most likely to be suspended.

But none of this will work if the people who run schools can’t speak honestly about race. Lee Teitel runs a program at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education that sends graduate students into schools to coach teachers and administrators on issues around race and equity. The students report back that it’s challenging, Teitel said. The problem is that it’s hard for some people to confront their personal issues with race — and comprehend the impact racism has across institutions like public schools. That’s the sort of education an equity chief must bring to school communities, networks, and central offices.

“You’ve got to change attitudes and beliefs, and you also have to give people the tools to do that, because dismantling racism in the schools is just as hard as it is dismantling it in the larger society,” Teitel said.

Listening tours

Christopher Chatmon, deputy chief of equity for the Oakland Unified School District, has his own advice for Chicago’s equity officer. Do a listening tour that spans anywhere from six months to a year, and interview students, parents, teachers, principals, central office staff, school board members, and community organizations.

That’s what Chatmon did after his office opened in 2016. It grew out of the district’s Office of African-American Male Achievement, which he helped found in 2010. Chatmon previously had worked as a principal at an alternative school in San Francisco and served executive director of Urban Services at the Oakland YMCA. Oakland Unified serves about 50,000 students and is 46 percent Latino, 24 percent black, 13 percent Asian, and 10 percent white.

“As we began to go deep into the work, we realized the evolution of that work would have more legs and tentacles,” Chatmon said. “We began to see that not only do we need targeted strategies for black boys as way to elevate access and performance, we also could benefit from having differentiated and targeted strategies for Latinos, Latinas, indigenous students, Asian and Pacific Islander students.”

In his first year, he drafted an equity policy that declared the district’s commitment to identifying and eliminating racial bias, and outlined ways to reach that goal. Now, his office is laying the groundwork for the plan and thinking through teaching and learning, professional development and curriculum (“the content is still extraordinarily Eurocentric,” he said), teacher recruitment and retention, parent engagement, budgeting, and social-emotional supports for children.

He has about 20 staff, including researchers and data analysts. In a district budget of about $780 million, his office has a $2.1 million slice.

The office spends money on outreach to parents, students, other community engagement events, and training teachers. The office also works on “narrative change,” sharing the stories of diverse students via newsletter, and informing people about accomplishments made by the office.

It’s a subtle way to counteract negative narratives about students of color, LGBTQ students and other marginalized people, Chatmon said. It also lets the public know the district’s values and keeps people abreast of its work.

“Otherwise,” he said, “you can be doing good work but it gets either suppressed or it doesn’t get lifted up.”

“CPS is stepping up”

Chicago’s equity officer won’t have an easy job. This new hire will step into several heated debates around racial equity, especially how CPS plans to spend $1 billion on improving school facilities, adding annexes, and shiny new buildings. He or she will also have to address teacher pipeline issues: The racial makeup of CPS’ teacher workforce doesn’t reflect the student population or that of the city as a whole.

Source: Chicago Public Schools

A recent WBEZ analysis found CPS’ proposed capital budget invests disproportionately more in buildings serving significant white populations and schools on the north side. And Chalkbeat Chicago reported last week that the proposal shows a skew toward investments in and near high-growth, gentrifying areas of the city. Critics are inflamed by what they say is the lack of an intelligent, fair or transparent process for prioritizing community needs.

At capital budget hearings last week, residents had mixed feelings about how CPS is allocating resources. Some applauded the district, while others cried out for more help.

Jackson said the district already has laid some equity groundwork, such as the Great Expectations Mentor Program, which grooms African-American men and Latinos interested in senior leadership roles at CPS. She also mentioned investments in under-enrolled schools, which tend to be in black communities that have been losing population.

“CPS is stepping up and and saying this is important, and while we have always prioritized equity, it’s important to have a cabinet level official [focused on equity],” Jackson said.

Even if Chicago’s chief equity officer transforms schools, public education is only one expression of racial inequity. Marshall, in Kentucky, emphasized that fixing a school system doesn’t change discrimination in banking, criminal justice, or housing. That doesn’t mean equity chiefs should throw their hands up in resignation. On the contrary, he said they should sit on anti-gun violence panels, address laws that perpetuate mass incarceration, and tie these issues back to schools, especially the school-to-prison pipeline.

“A school system is one link in the chain of change,” he said.

Boundary lines of proposed South Loop high school drive wedge between communities

2018-07-20T04:28:15+00:00

The parent, wearing an “I Love NTA” T-shirt, said it loudly and directly toward the end of the public comment section Thursday night. “It sickens me to be here today and see so many people fighting for scraps,” said Kawana Hebron, in a public meeting on the boundaries for a proposed South Loop high school on the current site of National Teachers Academy. “Every community on this map is fighting for scraps.”

The 1,200-student high school, slated to open for the 2019-2020 school year near the corner of Cermak Road and State Street, has become a wedge issue dividing communities and races on the Near South Side.

Supporters of NTA, which is a 82 percent black elementary school, say pressure from wealthy white and Chinese families is leading the district to shutter its exceptional 1-plus rated program. A lawsuit filed in Circuit Court of Cook County in June by parents and supporters contends the decision violates the Illinois Civil Rights Code.

But residents of Chinatown and the condo-and-crane laden South Loop have lobbied for an open-enrollment high school for years and that the district is running out of places to put one.

“I worry for my younger brother,” said a 15-year-old who lives between Chinatown and Bridgeport and travels north to go to the highly selective Jones College Prep. She said that too many students compete for too few seats in the nail-biting process to get into a selective enrollment high school. Plus, she worries about the safety, and environment, of the schools near her home. “We want something close, but good.”

The “general attendance” boundary for the proposed South Loop high school is outlined in blue. The neighborhoods outlined in red would receive “preference,” but they would not be guaranteed seats.

One by one, residents of Chinatown or nearby spoke in favor of the high school at the meeting in Hermann Hall at the Illinois Institute of Technology. They described their long drives, their fearfulness of dropping off children in schools with few, if any, Chinese students, and their concerns about truancy and poor academics at some neighboring open-enrollment high schools.

But their comments were sandwiched by dissenting views. A member of South Loop Elementary’s Local School Council argued that Chicago Public Schools has not established a clear process when it comes to shuttering an elementary and spending $10 million to replace it with a high school. “CPS scheduled this meeting at the same time as a capital budget meeting,” she complained.

She was followed by another South Loop parent who expressed concerns about potential overcrowding, the limited $10 million budget for the conversion, and the genesis of the project. “It’s a terrible way to start a new high school – on the ashes of a good elementary school,” the parent said.

The most persistent critique Thursday night was not about the decision to close NTA, but, rather, of the boundary line that would determine who gets guaranteed access and who doesn’t. The GAP, a diverse middle-class neighborhood bordered by 31st on the north, 35th on the South, King Drive to the east and LaSalle Street to the west, sits just outside the proposed boundary. A parade of GAP residents said they’ve been waiting for decades for a good option for their children but have been locked out in this iteration of the map. Children who live in the GAP would have “preference” status but would not be guaranteed access to seats.

“By not including our children into the guaranteed access high school boundaries – they are being excluded from high-quality options,” said Claudia Silva-Hernandez, the mother of two children, ages 5 and 7. “Our children deserve the peace of mind of a guaranteed-access option just like the children of South Loop, Chinatown, and Bridgeport.”

Leonard E. McGee, the president of the GAP Community Organization, said that tens of millions in tax-increment financing dollars – that is, money that the city collects on top of property tax revenues that is intended for economic development in places that need it most – originated from the neighborhood in the 1980s and went to help fund the construction of NTA. But not many of the area’s students got seats there.

Asked how he felt about the high school pitting community groups against each other, he paused. “If we’re all fighting for scraps, it must be a good scrap we’re fighting for.”

The meeting was run by Herald “Chip” Johnson, chief officer of CPS’ Office of Family and Community Engagement. He said that detailed notes from the meeting will be handed over to the office of CEO Janice Jackson. She will make a final recommendation to the Board of Education, which will put the plan up for a vote.

New budget gives CPS CEO Janice Jackson opportunity to play offense

2018-07-19T21:30:33+00:00

Running Chicago’s schools might be the toughest tour of duty in town for a public sector CEO. There have been eight chiefs in a decade – to be fair, two were interims – who have wrangled with mounting debt, aging buildings, and high percentages of students who live in poverty.

Then there’ve been recurring scandals, corruption, and ethics violations. Since she was officially named to the top job in January, CEO Janice Jackson has had to clean up a series of her predecessors’ lapses, from a special education crisis that revealed families were counseled out of services to a sexual abuse investigation that spotlighted a decade of system failures at every level to protect students.

But with budget season underway, the former principal finally gets the chance to go on the offensive. The first operations budget of her tenure is a $5.98 billion plan that contains some good news for a change: 5 percent more money, courtesy of the state revamp of the school funding formula and a bump from local tax revenues. CPS plans to funnel $60 million more to schools than it did last school year, for a total of $3.1 billion. Put another way, it plans to spend $4,397 per student as a base rate — a 2 percent increase from the year prior.

CPS’ total budget comes out to $7.58 billion once you factor in long-term debt and an ambitious $1 billion capital plan that is the focus of a trio of public hearings Thursday night. When it comes to debt, the district owes $8.2 billion as of June 30, or nearly $3,000 per every Chicago resident.

“The district, without a doubt, is on firmer footing than it was 18 months ago, but they’re not out of woods yet,” said Bobby Otter, budget director for the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability. “When you look at the overall picture (the $7.58 budget), they’re still running a deficit. This is now the seventh year in a row they are running a deficit, and the amount of debt the district has, combined with the lack of reserves, leaves them with little flexibility.”

Earlier this week, standing in front of an audience of executives at a City Club of Chicago luncheon, Jackson acknowledged that it had been an “eventful” seven months and said she was ready to focus on strategies for moving the district forward. “I won’t be waiting for next shoe to drop or wasting time and resources waiting for next problem. I want to design a system to educate and protect children.”

“I’m not in crisis mode,” she added.

Here’s what that looks like in her first year when you just consider the numbers. The biggest line items of any operating budget are salaries, benefits and pensions: Taken all together, they consume 66 percent of CPS’ planned spending for the 2018-2019 school year. Rounding out much of the rest are contracts with vendors ($542.6 million, or 9 percent), such as the controversial janitorial deals with Aramark and SodexoMAGIC; charter expenditures ($749 million, or 13 percent); and spending on transportation, textbooks, equipment, and the like (12 percent).

A closer look at how some of those items are allocated offers a window into Jackson’s vision. The Board of Education is scheduled to vote on the plan July 25.

Investing in choice

Earlier this month, the district announced a nearly $1 billion capital plan, funded by bonds, that would support new schools, technology upgrades, and annexes at some of the district’s most popular campuses. The operating budget, meanwhile, accounts for the people and programs driving those projects. It proposes nearly doubling the staff, from 10 to 17, in the office that manages charters, contract programs, and the creation of new schools. It reestablishes a chief portfolio officer who reports directly to the CEO. And it adds expands access to International Baccalaureate programs and Early College STEM offerings. In a letter at the beginning of the 2019 Budget Book, Jackson said such expansions “move the district closer to our goal of having 50 percent of students earn at least one college or career credential before graduating high school.”

Advocating for students

The budget seeds at least two new departments: a four-person Office of Equity charged with diversifying the teacher pipeline, among other roles, and a 20-person Title IX office that would investigate student abuse cases, including claims of student-on-student harassment.

Leaning into high schools

Fitting for a budget designed by a former high school principal – Jackson was running a high school before age 30 – the plan leans in to high schools, establishing $2 million to fund four new networks to oversee them. (That brings the total number of networks to 17; networks are mini-administrative departments that track school progress, assist with budgeting, and ensure policy and procedures are followed.) And it earmarks $75 million across three years for new science labs at neighborhood high schools. What’s more, it supports 10 additional career counselors to help campuses wrestle with a graduation mandate – set forth by Mayor Rahm Emanuel – that seniors have a post-secondary plan to graduate starting with the Class of 2020.

Throwing a lifeline to small schools

The budget also sets forth a $10 million “Small Schools Fund” to help schools with low enrollment retain teachers and offer after-school programs. It also earmarks an additional $5 million to help schools facing precipitous changes in enrollment, which can in turn lead to dramatic budget drops.

Supporting modest staff increases

After a round of layoffs were announced in June, the budget plan adds at least 200 teachers. But the district would not provide a clear accounting of whom to Chalkbeat by publication time. Earlier this week, it announced plans to fund additional school social workers (160) and special education case managers (94).

The district plans to add positions for the upcoming 2018-2019 year.

As Chicago Teachers Union organizer and Cook County Commissioner candidate Brandon Johnson pointed out in an impromptu press conference earlier this week in front of district HQ, the budget is still “woefully short” on school psychologists, nurses, and counselors. And it doesn’t address the calls from parents to restore librarians and instructors in such subjects as art, music, physical education — positions that have experienced dramatic cuts since 2011. “What is proposed today still leaves us short of when (Mayor Emanuel) took office,” Johnson said. “The needs of our students must be met.”

Principal Elias Estrada, who oversees two North Side schools, Alcott Elementary and Alcott High School, said he was still figuring out how the additional staffing would work. He’s getting another social worker – but he oversees two campuses that sit three miles apart, so he figures he’ll have to divide the person’s time between campuses. Estrada asked the board at Monday’s budget hearing to help him understand the criteria it uses to determine which schools get extra staff or additional programs, like IB. “I need a counselor, a clerk, and an assistant principal,” he said; currently those positions also are shared between the elementary and the high school.

After the meeting, he said that schools might have gotten slightly bigger budgets this year, but the increase was consumed by rising salaries and he wasn’t able to add any positions. What’s more, his building needs repairs, but it didn’t get picked for any of the facilities upgrades in the $1 billion capital plan that accompanied the budget.

“What is the process?” he asked. “The need is everywhere.”

At two public hearings on Monday, fewer than a dozen speakers signed up to ask questions of the board, central office administrators, or Jackson.

To see if your school is getting one of the newly announced positions or any funding from the capital plan, type it in the search box below.

Questions about sexual abuse cases squeeze top of CPS org chart

2018-06-29T18:03:30+00:00

Teachers and coaches have been barred from buildings pending investigations into accusations that they sexually abused students. Principals at schools where students were allegedly abused have been “reassigned” or axed. But no one atop the chain of command at Chicago Public Schools has faced removal for the school district’s failure to protect students, despite calls from parent groups and lawmakers for top officials to step down.

Meanwhile, the questioning is getting more pointed, with an influential parent group challenging Chicago Board of Education President Frank Clark at a public meeting, while state lawmakers and Chicago aldermen push for Clark and CPS CEO Janice Jackson to attend hearings intended to probe the district’s handling of cases of reported misconduct. The scandal also puts Mayor Rahm Emanuel under the microscope. Emanuel holds power over the school district, and appoints board members and school CEOs alike, which raises questions about his role in decision-making.

Emanuel’s spokeswoman Lauren Markowitz wouldn’t say whether he would answer lawmakers’ questions at any of the proposed or planned hearings, but said in a statement, “The mayor supports CPS’ work as they spare no expense to make sure our kids are safe.”

“Their work continues, because all of us are committed to ensuring what happened in the past does not happen again in the future,” she said.

On Wednesday, at the first board meeting since the sexual abuse scandal went nuclear, a member of the vocal parent group Raise Your Hand stepped to the mic to ask Jackson, Clark, and other officials—on the record—about their role in CPS’ mishandling of sexual abuse cases.

Raise Your Hand spokeswoman Jennie Biggs, whose children are enrolled at two CPS high schools and one elementary school, began her remarks by pointing out a little-known aspect of the district org chart: that CPS lawyers who interrogated student sexual abuse victims reported to the district’s general counsel, who reports directly to the board president. That means, she continued, “that President Clark and his predecessors were briefed on rampant reports of sexual abuse in our schools over time.”

Biggs said that the public doesn’t know how much Clark, who was named board president in 2015, or his predecessor David Vitale, who served from 2011 to 2015, knew about systematic problems at CPS related to sexual abuse, or how much they shared with their colleagues on the board. “But we do know that they knew and did nothing.”

“The CPS legal department handled over 400 cases of sexual abuse or assault incidents in the school setting over the last seven years,” she said. “We want to know: How is it possible that the board never recognized that more needed to be done to ensure proper training at schools, and why did you not employ network staff to ensure compliance in this area?”

“Sure, some individual teachers, principals and staff are also complicit,” she told the board. “But you hold the keys to district policymaking, and you did not act. You did not do your jobs.”

No one on the board responded.

Angling for more hearings

In a statement emailed to Chalkbeat and other local news outlets after the meeting, CPS spokesman Michael Passman elaborated on Clark’s role, saying Clark is briefed “on significant investigations and legal actions, and whenever he has been presented with a matter involving sexual abuse he has pushed CPS staff to help ensure district practices are as strong as possible.” The email listed policies implemented since 2014 to keep students safe, including strengthening background checks, establishing a discipline committee to review employee misconduct investigations, holding trainings to help employees identify signs of abuse, and enacting policies offering guidance to principals on reporting requirements and ensuring appropriate student/staff interactions.

However, Passman wouldn’t say how many sexual abuse incidents Clark was notified of, when he was notified, or name specific measures or policies he “pushed.”

And Clark hung up when Chalkbeat Chicago called seeking more details.

"We want to know: How is it possible that the board never recognized that more needed to be done to ensure proper training at schools?"

Jennie Biggs

Lawmakers also want to reach the board president to find out what Clark knew—and when. Some were left livid last week when Jackson and Clark skipped a state hearing about the abuse scandal. CPS sent representatives from various departments, but legislators were not satisfied.

“The question is: Was the law department conducting these investigations and not reporting back to Frank Clark—or if they were reporting, why didn’t the board and Frank Clark do something sooner? It’s one or the other,” said state Rep. Fred Crespo, chairman of the House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee.

Crespo, a Democrat whose district includes Chicago’s northwest suburbs, said state lawmakers are planning a second hearing, and that he will ask Clark, Jackson, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel to appear.

Chicago aldermen also have seized the moment, introducing a City Council resolution to establish hearings about sexual abuse with the council’s Committee on Education and Child Development and Clark, Jackson, and top city officials.

But one of the aldermen backing the measure, Ald. Scott Waguespack (32nd ward, which includes parts of Lincoln Park and Logan Square), said he has struggled to garner support from the committee chair, Ald. Howard Brookins (21st, which includes parts of Auburn Gresham and Chatham)—thus leaving the resolution in limbo. Brookins wasn’t reachable for comment Thursday.

To bypass the committee, Waguespack said aldermen could lean on “Rule 41,” a parliamentary procedure that would allow council members to wait 60 days before bringing the resolution to a vote at a City Council meeting. But since there’s no council meeting in August, they would have to wait until September, at least. Even then there’s no guarantee they could get a hearing, because the council can vote down the maneuver, especially if Mayor Rahm Emanuel doesn’t back it, which he hasn’t publicly.

“It’s imperative when you look at the chain of command to ask: Who were the people involved who knew about it, and what responsibility is there for those people to either resign or be fired,” Waguespack said. “To me that’s the ultimate question.”

A “top-to-bottom” review

In a May board meeting, just days before the Chicago Tribune first reported the widespread mishandling of sexual misconduct cases involving students and adults, the board tapped Maggie Hickey, a former federal prosecutor and state Executive Inspector General, to spearhead an independent review of CPS’ handling sexual violence at schools.

In an interview with Chalkbeat, Hickey was tight-lipped about the scope of her review.

“I am looking at all the policies and procedures in a top-to-bottom review,” she said.

Asked more specifically if her review would address the role played by Clark and the board, she reiterated: “I am doing a top-to-bottom review.”

Also potentially examining the role district leaders played in handling abuse cases: CPS Inspector General Nicholas Schuler. The school board this week granted him the power to review CPS’ handling of sexual assault cases going back to 2000.

On Thursday, Schuler said it was too early to say whether his review would explore the actions of Clark and other top officials, but that “the answer to that is—potentially.”

“We follow the evidence where it leads,” he said. “If it turns out people at a high level or low level responded inappropriately, we’ll be looking into that.”

Crespo questioned whether Schuler will be empowered to review the district’s response. “If it were up to me, I would give the inspector general power to conduct investigations and have him report to the Illinois State Board of Education, and then ISBE would work to see how the review went and help implement recommendations,” he said. “I just don’t see this current model working very well for the students at CPS.”

In early June, Emanuel apologized to student victims and pledged to fix systemic breakdowns that put them at risk. But his challengers in the 2019 mayoral election blasted him for not acting sooner once the Tribune began filing Freedom of Information requests in January seeking details about sexual violence at schools.

In her statement, mayoral spokeswoman Markowitz said that what happened to the student victims is “unacceptable,” commended them for having the courage to come forward, and emphasized that, while CPS has taken action to better protect students, “clearly more is required to make sure this never happens again.”

“That’s why [CPS CEO Jackson] and her team have implemented new policies, new trainings, renewed background checks, and a top-to-bottom review of the district to better safeguard and advocate for students,” Markowitz said.

Yet, critics of CPS and the mayor’s office argue that CPS’ latest controversy is another example of city officials failing to proactively tackle or disclose problems, and then scrambling to put out fires only after they’ve been exposed by journalists and government watchdogs.

Crespo emphasized that the sexual abuse scandal comes on the heels of revelations about delays and denials of services for students with special needs and exposés about filthy conditions at scores of CPS schools. “Where is the board?,” he asked. “How can they let all this happen?” And, Crespo added: “How involved is Mayor Rahm Emanuel in these decision-making processes?”

“It all starts and ends with him,” Crespo said.