STRIKE COMPLICATES STUDENTS’ COLLEGE APPLICATIONS
With deadlines looming, CPS seniors seek outside help during work stoppage
Yujie Huang’s eyes darted back and forth as she read 17-year-old Danilo Velazquez’s college admissions essay Thursday.
“You have to bridge the gap right here,” Huang, a member of the University of Chicago’s College Advising Corps, told Velazquez, a senior at Walter Payton College Prep who had sought her help on his applications — including some that are due as early as next week.
While such college advising sessions normally take place at high schools around the city this time of year, Huang and Velazquez met in a sunny conference room at a library in Chinatown as a Chicago teachers strike continued through its sixth day. The strike continues Friday.
With the schools not available, Huang and other members of the advising corps have instead met with students at libraries and on the U. of C. campus, where they offered everything from help on financial aid to tips on what admissions officers are looking for in students’ personal statements.
So far, dozens of students or more have sought out the help, including about 50 who attended sessions held last Friday and Monday.
Lightfoot notes hardship
Earlier in the day, Mayor Lori Lightfoot noted in an unrelated media conference the hardship the strike was putting on students applying to college, nothing that Chicago Public Schools was recently forced to cancel an SAT testing session, potentially putting some students at risk of missing scholarship application deadlines.
“Right now normally would be the time when CPS is going fullbore to make sure that our young people have their applications ready for Nov. 1 so they could apply for federal financial aid,” Lightfoot said. “So every day that goes by there is another cost to our students and their families.”
Colleges well aware of strike
There were some indications schools were willing to cut students some slack in the process.
“I want to assure you that we are mindful of this unique situation,” a counselor from Butler University in Indiana wrote in an unsolicited email to potential applicants from CPS. “Although November 1 is our Early Action deadline, we won’t penalize you if your high school transcript and school report aren’t on record by that date. Because this is beyond your control, we will be flexible and allow your school counselor additional time to submit these documents on your behalf.”
Beloit College’s vice president for enrollment, M. Leslie Davidson, wrote students telling them they could even request an extension for their entire application if they applied to the small liberal arts school in southern Wisconsin.
‘Nothing we can do’
At the library near her home in Back of the Yards, Whitney Young senior Tacarra Meaux, 17, said colleges had reached out to her, too, to say her application wouldn’t be penalized if some submissions were late.
“Chicago is a big city, and a lot of [students] are applying,” Meaux said. The colleges “know there’s nothing we can do about it.”
Still, she acknowledged the situation wasn’t ideal.
“It’s stressful,” she said. Meaux said she used the session Thursday to better understand a Cornell University essay question and plot an outline. She planned to return for a second session Friday, so she could turn in an updated copy of her essay and get feedback from a corps member before making revisions.
The assistance was perhaps an even bigger benefit to first generation college students like Isabel Davila, 17, a senior at Benito Juarez High School in Pilsen. She needed help understanding some of the questions in her common application, which can be sent to multiple schools, as well as assistance filling out intricate federal financial aid forms.
“I know the teachers are trying to make things better for us, but some of the students are really struggling. If it wasn’t for this, I would have had a hard time getting through it,” Davila said.
After the session, Davila declared: “I think I can continue to go through it on my own now.”
One benefit
Even with all the stress of the situation, some students noted there was a benefit to being off school while immersed in the application process: no classes to attend — and no homework.
As 17-year-old Payton senior Kipras Jaynuska noted: “It’s given me more time to work on stuff.”
The city of Chicago will invest $9.3 million in a new mental health initiative that officials say will begin filling the gaps in services citywide.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot unveiled the Framework for Mental Health Equity, a new comprehensive plan that increases access to mental care through a four-step targeted approach. The program remains equitable by prioritizing communities most in need, she said.
“That’s what makes our plan different,” said Lightfoot. “Before our system was just a patchwork. Now we are thinking about our system as a whole by bringing people together to figure out how we can deliver services to the people most in need.”
Allison Arwady, acting commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health, said her agency will be engaging directly with communities instead of waiting for people to come to it.
Arwady said people tend to not seek mental health service for four main reasons: they don’t know where to go; whether their insurance will cover the service; if they can afford it; and stigmas associated with mental health services.
“The problems all point to our lack of a coordinated system,” Arwady said. “They are made worst by the fact many Chicago neighborhoods suffer from a legacy of institutional racism and disinvestment.
“Systemic problems require systemic solutions.”
The Framework for Mental Health Equity will address those in need of services through its four steps.
◆ Investing in a network of 20 outpatient clinics, including the five city-operated mental health clinics, to provide “traumainformed services to more people.” The city will invest in publicly funded clinics and nonprofit organizations that are already providing mental health services.
◆ Focus on mental health needs of victims of violence through community outreach.
◆ Fund mental health crisis programs. “We will fund outreach and stabilization to these residents focusing on neighborhoods with high rates of hospitalizations for mental health crisis,” Arwady said.
◆ Help residents find services near them via a hotline.