The fall pivot: From hybrid to all remote
Inside Lightfoot’s move to switch the learning plan for students in Chicago Public Schools
In the days and hours before she gave up on in-school learning at Chicago Public Schools this fall, Mayor Lori Lightfoot was getting squeezed from the outside and the inside.
Coronavirus cases continued their seemingly implacable rise despite her constant entreaties to residents to wear masks and follow social distancing rules.
Her political nemeses in the Chicago Teachers Union repeatedly accused Lightfoot of putting students and teachers at risk, even as the rumblings about an impending strike vote grew louder. Within her administration, CPS CEO Dr. Janice Jackson desperately was trying to maintain some kind of face-toface instruction. Thousands of disadvantaged Chicago children count on schools for education, but also for safety, encouragement, structure, meals and “a lot of other things some people take for granted,” Jackson said as the district opted out of having students in classrooms to start the new academic year.
Meanwhile, the city’s coronavirus point person planted her flag publicly on the idea that the hybrid model with kids going in to school two days per week could work despite rising case counts. Public health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady told reporters that “with the appropriate procedures in place, I
honestly do not think the risk of spread is significant” inside schools if the virus is under control.
And Lightfoot herself was eager to show Chicago could reopen the right way even as other big cities across the U.S. struggled not to get overwhelmed by the disease.
In the end, with many school districts locally and nationally opting to keep their students at home, Lightfoot said she was “guided by the science” and shelved until at least November the hybrid model that would have sent kids to school two days per week.
The possibility of the second politically crippling teachers walkout in her 15 months on the job wasn’t the reason, Lightfoot firmly insisted. Instead, she cited the increasing coronavirus rates Arwady had discussed just a day earlier, when the doctor said in-school learning could still work.
Lightfoot also pointed to an online CPS survey she said indicated just 1 in 5 Black and Latino parents planned to send their kids into school in September if given the chance.
According to CPS, nearly one-third of the 37,467 respondents who identified themselves as Black or Latino said they weren’t sure whether they would send their kids into school in the fall after reading the district’s preliminary framework. In a school system with 355,000 students, where about 83% are either Black or Latino, more than 45% of the respondents who identified themselves as Black or Latino said they wouldn’t send their kids. Only about 20% of Black and Hispanic respondents said they were planning to send their students into school.
CPS said it was “responding to feedback from families” in deciding to scotch the hybrid plan for the first quarter of the school year.
In his predominantly Black West Side ward, Ald. Michael Scott Jr., 24th, said parents were torn about what they would do when classes started Sept. 8 before Lightfoot took the decision out of their hands.
“People I talked to were very concerned with the (in-school) pod, the hybrid plan,” Scott said. “Is it going to be safe? And then, in terms of child care, does having your kids in school two days each week even help? If you’re a working parent, you’ve still got to figure out the other three days anyway.
“It was a Catch-22 for everybody,” said Scott, who chairs the City Council Education Committee. “This was the right move at the right time, so parents and administrators can at least prepare for the fall.”
As for the political pressure facing Lightfoot from the teachers union, Scott said he thinks the mayor relied on scientific evidence, while adding “Look, obviously nobody wants a strike.”
Scott himself announced Thursday that he had tested positive for the coronavirus.
On the Southwest Side, Ald. George Cardenas said many kids in his predominantly
“Being able to deliver instruction and educational services in the third largest school district in the country during a pandemic is an enormous logistical puzzle; trying to do so without the full support of her school staff is highly improbable.” — Robert Bruno, UIC labor professor
Hispanic 12th Ward would have benefited from at least trying to get them into classrooms at the start of the year.
“People are divided, but they want kids taught by teachers, to learn normally, and you just don’t get that same growth and achievement when they aren’t in school,” Cardenas said. “Especially when you have three, four, five people in a home, kids who are very young all the way up to high school. The high school kid can’t get their work done when the 3-year-old wants attention. It just doesn’t work.
“At least if you get a kid in a classroom, a teacher can look at him and say, ‘Hey, Johnny, I didn’t see you on that Zoom. What the hell’s going on?’ ” Cardenas added. “They could have tried, then stopped it if people were getting sick.”
Lightfoot wasn’t making her decision in a vacuum.
The reliance on the increasing numbers to justify going all-remote came as Chicago’s rate of daily COVID-19 cases had been going up for several weeks since it fell to under 200 in late June. The increase is likely thanks in part to a loosening of rules around eating in restaurants and other public activities that took effect at the end of that month.
At her daily briefings, Arwady repeatedly has pointed to 400 new cases per day in Chicago as the benchmark at which inperson schooling might not be safe, and the city would also have to consider rolling back other parts of the reopening plan in order to try to tamp down the disease’s spread.
Chicago is still well below that 400 line.
Wednesday, when Lightfoot canceled in-person learning in CPS, the sevenday average of daily new cases in Chicago stood at 277.
But after talking the day before about the likelihood classroom learning could take place safely with proper safeguards in place, Arwady said it seemed probable enough that the number would rise to 400 by early September that it was appropriate to tell students to stay home a month ahead of the start of the school year.
Faced with the prospect of potentially hitting 400, Arwady said, “the last thing we wanted to do was say, ‘Let’s move ahead with hybrid model,’ and then a month from now be at a point where we needed to pull back on that.”
Along with those rising numbers, Lightfoot had to think about what would happen if the CTU again went on strike.
UIC labor professor Robert Bruno said a second CTU walkout on Lightfoot’s watch within a year of the 11-day strike in October 2019 “would have not only prevented or delayed CPS from providing instruction to over 300,000 students but in the long run been disastrous for the parties’ relationship.”
“Being able to deliver instruction and educational services in the third largest school district in the country during a pandemic is an enormous logistical puzzle; trying to do so without the full support of her school staff is highly improbable,” said Bruno, who wrote a book about the 2012 teachers strike during Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s first term.
In deciding whether to start remotely or not, Bruno said CPS “had a number of very challenging concerns to consider and balance.”
“From parent and staff fears to a commitment to quality student instruction and safety, it seems that in the end CPS realized the only safe and logistical way to educate kids in the fall was to do so remotely,” Bruno said. “And that decision is worthy of respect.”
It remains to be seen whether Lightfoot acted quickly enough to silence her critics and set kids up for success in the fall. Some other big U.S. cities, among them Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, announced weeks ago that they would go completely remote in their public schools to start the school year. And several suburban districts outside Chicago also already took that step.
DePaul professor Marie Donovan said deciding to start remotely was wise, but should have come sooner.
“I wish they made that decision and communicated it a good three weeks ago because that would’ve served families better,” Donovan said. “It also would’ve served teachers, administrators and all the support staff better.”
Donovan also said the city and CPS need to do more to educate parents about what it means to do remote learning and guide them through it, including tips on how to deal with children who have Zoom fatigue. “It’s not just accessing the internet,” she said.
North Side Ald. Andre Vasquez, 40th, said the athome framework would be stronger now if it had been decided earlier.
“If we had been able to focus our attention on the remote plan instead of planning for both remote and hybrid, we could have dedicated more resources to making sure the remote plan is as robust as possible for students,” he said.
Politically, Lightfoot has positioned herself as a sort of centrist on the coronavirus. She frequently touts the need to listen to scientific data and public health professionals about the crisis, but her administration also has claimed Chicago is the “most open” big city in America.
In addition, the mayor has clashed with Gov. J.B. Pritzker over certain measures, including restaurants.
When Pritzker reopened restaurants for outdoor dining, Lightfoot publicly and privately pushed him to allow customers to eat inside, citing the economic need. New York, by comparison, doesn’t yet allow indoor dining at restaurants.
When the coronavirus became a full-on crisis in March, Lightfoot was reluctant to cancel school, citing the problems it would cause working parents and the number of students who rely on CPS for meals.
As pressure grew to close CPS, Lightfoot in midMarch said she had no plans to shutter the schools. Hours later, Pritzker shut down all the state’s schools, including Chicago’s.