Chicago school officials must take bold steps to help families during the coronavirus pandemic
Lunchroom workers hand out meals for students at William P. Nixon Elementary on North Keeler Avenue in Chicago on March 19.
At the first virtual Chicago Board of Education meeting in Chicago’s history, I asked our appointed officials of the nation’s third-largest school district to take bold action.
While social isolation is tough, the real crisis will happen later, when parents have double mortgage payments and utility bills. Therefore, the board should support a bill to lift the ban on rent control in the state Legislature and demand no evictions of our students, ever, not just during a COVID-19 crisis. Evictions and unemployment will spike in the aftermath of this pandemic. To reduce the number of homeless students, the board could halt any business with financial institutions that do not adopt a no-eviction and noforeclosure policy. To this end, the board must also support the community benefits agreement for the Obama Presidential Center and commit to no school closures or displacements in and around the center.
Lastly, we can deputize under- and unemployed parents to ramp up services to our housing-insecure students, hire them as unionized custodians to keep our schools clean and prevent another COVID-19 outbreak. The public sector must become a place to expand opportunities, not a casualty of the calamity. Especially our homeless, but all students, also need free internet and ChromeBooks.
Unfortunately this is not the last we are going to see of new sicknesses, and we need better means and policies to allow internet communication and videoconferencing if school is out again. In addition, to protect our undocumented families who do not qualify for extended unemployment insurance benefits, the district can provide cash payments available to them at schools to stay afloat in these uncertain times.
Jackson Potter, Chicago Teachers
Union trustee, teacher at Back of the Yards High School