CPS high schools still without a reopening date
Here’s how one principal is helping her students cope
Lacking a high school return date and facing students disengaged with remote learning, Principal Karen Calloway of Chicago’s Kenwood Academy opened a learning hub in the library where up to 15 students could work, supervised by security officers and accessible to interventionists and administrators.
The school has invited students who seem to need more support academically or emotionally, and most have ended up coming, she said. They are still working independently, not talking much, but they can print materials, and it makes a difference to be around their peers, she said. From time to time, Calloway has stopped by, trying “to make it somewhat normal, as much as we can.”
One mom cried when Calloway called to invite a student, who “never had a bad grade in her life” but had begun to struggle with remote learning. “She said, ‘I just don’t know how to help her,’” Calloway said. The student is now back on track.
Though Calloway does not know when most of her students are coming back, aside from a few who returned through special education programs, she said she feels good about that day, whenever it comes. She’s been hearing about many students who are not doing well, academically or mentally.
“They’re so used to being isolated now, they’re uncomfortable when they’re around people,” she said, adding that high school years are important for developing social skills.
As elementary students return to classrooms in waves — next adding kindergarten through fifth graders on March 1 and sixth through eighth
graders March 8 — Chicago Public Schools is under pressure from high school families, whether they want an in-person option or improvements to remote learning. CPS has not yet surveyed high school students, but as of late January, less than one-third of K-8 students had opted in to the in-person plan.
The agreement between CPS and the Chicago Teachers Union to reopen schools, reached earlier this month, stipulates that the parties must work together on a plan for high schools.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Friday that CPS has reached out to the teachers union to begin those talks “and I’m anxious for that to get underway so we can get our high schoolers back in school before the end of the year.”
CPS has also sent an email to families saying the latest Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance supports the district’s approach.
“Opening schools for inperson learning as safely and quickly as possible, and keeping them open, is important
given the many known and established benefits of in-person learning,” the CDC’s website states. The agency said layered precautions can reduce the risk of in-school spread, “regardless of the underlying community burden — with risk being the lowest if community spread is low and proven mitigation strategies are implemented consistently.”
But the CDC also recognized that children can spread the virus to others. “Resuming and maintaining in-person learning may pose risks to children, teachers, school administrators, and other staff in the school environment, and their families and household members,” the CDC website states, noting risk factors such as age and underlying medical conditions.
In a video clip shared by CPS, city Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady said the CDC guidance is good news for Chicago, where the 3.4% test positivity rate on Friday falls in the “lower transmission” category, though the city is in the “substantial transmission”
category when considering average new weekly cases.
“K-12 schools should be our last settings to close after all other mitigation measures are employed and the first to reopen when they can do safely,” Arwady said.
At Kenwood, a majority Black school whose 2,000 students are less likely to come from low-income households than the district overall — 59% compared with 76% — Calloway said she trusts the public health guidance and that the district will follow through on its safety commitments.
Kenwood has a recently upgraded ventilation system and plenty of protective equipment, she said.
The reopening framework also calls for the creation of school-level safety committees, which Calloway said is typical of how she operates, anyway.
“Having more eyes on it is better to me,” Calloway said. “I thought that was a great idea that came out of the negotiations.”
Before the CPS-CTU deal, the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association, called on CPS to involve school leaders in reopening planning. At the time, CPAA said few principals and assistant principals believed the district was ready to reopen, based on a survey with 377 respondents.
Calloway said she tries to be responsive to feedback from educators, students and parents, and changed the school’s bell schedule to a block schedule with longer classes and less time spent logging in and out of virtual classrooms.
“Students felt they didn’t feel as overwhelmed when they went from having eight classes to four classes in a day,” she said.
Though high school schedules present more challenges than the elementary level, Calloway said it could work to phase in grades similar to the K-8 plan, starting with ninth graders and seventh and eighth grade students who are enrolled in Kenwood’s Academic Center.
Each group requires different support, such as guiding seniors through postsecondary plans and applications. More students in last year’s graduating class took a gap year than is typical, but students this year seem more optimistic about being able to go away to college, Calloway said.
The school’s staff has also been following up with last year’s class. If a student didn’t end up going to college, for example, the school will track them down, sometimes through parents or peers, and see if they need help, Calloway said.
A small number of students have completely disconnected, mostly those who already had difficulties with school, Calloway said. Administrators and security officers have gone to relatives’ homes to find students and ask what they need in order to participate. Sometimes a student will start logging on for a few days only to disappear again, she said.
“It really pulls at your heartstrings, because you know it’s not something you have any control over,” she said. “You want to try everything you can to help.”
A snapshot of districtwide data released in January showed that among all students in prekindergarten through high school, 89% participated in remote learning and 9% were entirely absent the week of Jan. 11. Noting Black students had the highest absentee rate of 13%, CPS Chief Education Officer LaTanya McDade said the number of students who are not participating at all is her greatest concern, with the pandemic continuing to highlight the inequities seen in and beyond Chicago.
Students are going to be affected by the past year of isolation for a long time to come, Calloway said.
While the pandemic has caused a focus on physical health and safety, “mental health needs to be discussed as well,” Calloway said.
In another promising sign Illinois is beating back the COVID-19 pandemic, cases and deaths at Illinois long-term care facilities have dropped to levels not seen since late summer, according to state data released Friday.
Following weeks of focused vaccination of longterm care residents and workers, the state reported 33 residents died from the virus over the past week. That’s the lowest reported tally since mid-August and exponentially lower than the 650 weekly deaths reported in early December.
Long-term care residents not only have seen a sizable drop in the number of deaths, they also now make up a far smaller share of those who are dying of COVID-19 each week — going from roughly half or more of these deaths in Illinois to near 10% now.
Long-term care residents were among the first groups prioritized for vaccination, and advocates for seniors and industry officials credit the vaccines for reducing the virus’s toll in long-term care facilities. But both groups cautioned that the pandemic remains far from over.
“We still need to remember we’re in a crisis, even though we’re seeing positive trends,” said Ryan Gruenenfelder, a director of advocacy and outreach for AARP Illinois.
Matt Pickering, executive director of the industry group Health Care Council of Illinois, said in a statement that the figures show “we are finally turning the tide in nursing homes.”
“Two months of steady declines in the number of new coronavirus cases and deaths among our residents is proof positive that the vaccine works,” he said. “We will not let our guard down
“Two months of steady declines in the number of new coronavirus cases and deaths among our residents is proof positive that the vaccine works. We will not let our guard down quite yet, however.”
quite yet, however.”
The hopeful trends come as the state approaches a sobering milestone. In the past week, the state recorded its 9,689th death of a long-term care resident, leaving the state just a few hundred shy of 10,000 deaths among nearly 75,000 cases.
Health officials warned as the pandemic was getting underway that long-term care residents were among the most vulnerable, and the virus, as predicted, tore through Illinois facilities in ways that exposed oversight failures. Facilities were put on near-lockdowns, with families largely unable to visit, as residents endured a deadly spring surge and even deadlier one in the fall.
The state as a whole started to see a downturn in confirmed infections in November,
but cases in the state’s long-term care facilities didn’t crest until a month later, state data shows.
Vaccinations began shortly after that mid-December peak, when federal and state guidelines prioritized long-term care residents, along with health workers, for the first round of shots.
The federal government enlisted pharmacies to travel to long-term care facilities to vaccinate residents and staff. There were notable delays in that program, which contributed to broader frustrations with Illinois’ vaccination rollout, but the governor has said he expected all facilities to have been visited at least once by Monday.
The state health department
and governor’s office did not respond to questions about whether that goal was met. State data shows that, as of Friday, more than 270,000 doses had been administered to long-term care residents and staff. It’s unclear how many were first doses or second doses.
The state reports that the long-term care vaccination program has more than 170,000 doses left to administer. But the state has previously said the program may not need all of those shots to complete vaccinations of willing residents and workers at long-term care facilities.
It’s also unclear how many residents and staff each facility has vaccinated. The state is three weeks beyond the legal deadline to respond to a Tribune public records request for such data, and the state hasn’t answered repeated questions about its delay in responding.
The state also did not immediately respond to questions about the latest trends in long-term care data.
Gruenenfelder, with AARP Illinois, said challenges remain in the state’s broader vaccination program, including whether shots are being distributed swiftly and fairly to older state residents, particularly Black and Hispanic people living in communities hardest hit by the pandemic.
“We remain deeply concerned that they’re able to get the vaccine as everybody else does,” he said.
— Matt Pickering, executive director of the industry group Health Care Council of Illinois