Chicago Public Schools reopens after yearlong COVID-19 shutdown: ‘When schools closed ... none of us thought it would be yet another year’
After multiple delays and a battle with the teachers union, Chicago Public Schools opened its doors Monday to tens of thousands of kindergarten through fifth graders — most of whom haven’t seen the inside of a CPS classroom in nearly a year.
At Hawthorne Scholastic Academy in the Lake View area, where Mayor Lori Lightfoot and CPS CEO Janice Jackson greeted returning students, the mayor could hardly contain her joy over the reopening.
On the drive to the school, Lightfoot said she saw young kids “skipping ahead” of their parents with excitement. In the building, Lightfoot said a second grader told her he wanted to make new friends.
“This is exactly what we fought for,” Lightfoot said, alluding to the bitter fight with the Chicago Teachers Union over the return to in-person learning.
Lightfoot thanked teachers and staff at schools and told parents that her administration was listening to them, even if it may not have seemed like that at times. She also reflected on the long delay caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
“When schools closed a year ago, none of us thought it would be yet another year. We thought and hoped it would be weeks, then we thought it would be months, then we thought surely by the start of this school year we’d be back,” Lightfoot said. “But fate had another plan.”
CPS spent $100 million to make sure classrooms were ready for in-person learning, Lightfoot said. The schools have offered vaccine opportunities to 18,000 employees, the mayor said.
Hawthorne is not representative of the district overall in that more than 55% of families said they would send their children back when schools reopened, according to CPS figures. District-wide, only about 30% of students have chosen the in-person option among the children eligible to return by March 8, when sixth through eighth graders are due back.
Also, about 50% of Hawthorne students are white, compared to about 11% of all CPS students. That disparity — in which the parents choosing to send their students back for in-person classes have tended to be whiter and more affluent — has been seen throughout the Chicago region.
CPS leaders have also pointed to data on grades, participation, access and attendance to make the point that the limitations of remote learning have also affected students of color disproportionately.
On the other side of the city, outside Sutherland Elementary in the Beverly area, many parents arrived on foot with their child’s hands in their.
Outside, masked staff members and teachers, some with clipboards, others with tablets, helped make sure parents and children knew where they were supposed to be on this first day of school.
Some children cried as school security took temperatures at the front at the main entrance. Other children bounded away from parents with plastic shopping bags in tow full of school supplies like paper towels, tissues and other cleaning supplies.
Most parents and children seemed excited that in-person learning was resuming.
“My oldest son, Miles, is a 4th grader. He really wanted to go back. We were in the car today and he was like, ‘I’m so excited, I can barely stand it,’” said Beverly resident Patrick McNulty. His second grader, Colin, was a bit more nervous with first-day jitters, so McNulty walked both boys to their designated doors, not leaving until they were comfortable saying goodbye. He said the teachers did a good job with remote learning, but it just wasn’t the same doing social interaction with the kids.
Chris and Angela Iverson, Beverly residents since 2012, walked their first and third grade daughters, Amelia and Juliana, up to school with their preschool-aged brothers. Angela Iverson said remote learning wasn’t ideal, but she didn’t have horror stories about it either. The couple didn’t second guess bringing their girls for in-person learning because the family already endured the coronavirus.
Dezsiree Jones was getting teary-eyed dropping of her second grader Kandace. As Jones was heading home going to get ready for work, she said her daughter is excited to be back in school.
“She’s excited about being back, so I’m excited for her,” she said.
John Campbell is a parent with three children, ages 3, 5 and 8. He’s having to deal with bus pickups and drop-offs with his two oldest at Sutherland. Before the pandemic, if he was running late, his children could wait inside the school, but protocols now don’t allow for that, he said.
“I got to make sure that I’m here on time,” he said. “It’s a blessing and a curse, but I do believe the kids need this. The break has been detrimental to their development. I know it’s all about choice, how the parents feel bringing the kids back. I pray that this works out so next fall, we will have a familiar first day of school. I miss normal. It has to get better.”
Despite the thousands of children who returned to classes Monday, remote learning will continue for the foreseeable future. Even most of the students who’ve returned will only physically be in schools for two days each week. And high school students remain in e-learning full time, though CPS officials say they hope to bring them back before the end of the school year.
Up to 37,000 kindergarten through fifth graders were expected to return to school Monday, though actual turnout has tended to be lower than the numbers of those who said they would return. Before Monday, only a few thousand preschool and special education students had returned to classes, though that group’s return was suspended by teachers’ earlier refusal to work in person.
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