Column: For too many Chicago children, school is their only safety net. What will happen to them if CPS doesn’t reopen this fall?
In the volatile debate over reopening public schools this fall, the voices of the Chicago Teachers Union, the mayor and national policymakers were loud and clear. But as usual, there was silence from those who will be impacted most.
Our children didn’t have a say in this.
Most of them are too young to carefully weigh the pros and cons of remote learning versus returning to the classroom. A great number are throwaway children anyway. They live in deprived neighborhoods, where quality education never has been a top priority of our government. Learning was minimal, even during the best of times.
The decision was left to surrogates, who can get so entangled in their own feelings that they lose sight of what is in the best interest of the children. This was the wrong time for teachers to float the idea of a strike to force Chicago Public Schools to drop plans to reopen in September in favor of all-remote learning. We need all voices contributing to a solution.
Eventually, kids will have to return to school. The Chicago Public Schools’ proposed reopening framework was not perfect, but it was a good start. It offered a hybrid of options, in which parents could choose to keep their children home or send them back to school two days a week under strict protocols designed to keep COVID-19 to a minimum.
Without question, parents must be able to decide what’s best for their own children. This time, e-schooling guidelines would have been much stricter than last spring. There would be a minimum of five hours of instruction or assigned work per day and attendance would be tracked.
We don’t have to worry much about the kids whose parents choose to home-school. The children we must be concerned about are the ones who have no structure in their lives other than in the classroom. We must speak on behalf of the invisible ones, for whom school is a respite from chaos, fear and danger. It is their only lifeline to success and, often, survival.
They live in tiny apartments full of people, some of them good and some of them bad. There is no cute little table set up in a corner with a computer, notebooks and colored pencils. It is never quiet at home. Someone is always yelling or hitting.
Fourth grader Gizzell Ford was one of those children before her grandmother tortured her to death inside their maggot-infested West Side apartment. There are others, whose names we don’t know. But we are sure they exist because police have told us how they run narcotics, hold guns for criminals and stand as lookouts at open-air drug markets.
We encounter them on our way to dinner on the Gold Coast. They stop us on Michigan Avenue, peddling 75-cent candy bars for $2. They are the homeless children snuggled beneath a blanket with their mother on the sidewalk. Sometimes they ask us for money. Sometimes they lower their head in shame.
They go to bed hungry and wake up eager to walk a treacherous path to school, where a hot breakfast awaits them. They couldn’t care less whether it is eaten in the school cafeteria or at their desk, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now recommends.
These are the boys who practically live in the principal’s office. A teacher disciplines him for talking back to her in class. The next day, he gets into trouble for cursing on the playground. Using foul language is the only way he knows to get an adult’s attention because at home, that’s how everyone communicates.
He falls asleep during reading class. He doesn’t do his homework. He can’t even grasp the basic concept of two plus two equals four. When some people look at him, they envision a troubled life down the road — if he makes it that far.
He doesn’t think he will. And in neighborhoods such as West and East Garfield Park, Englewood, North Lawndale and Washington Park, there’s a good chance he won’t.
You might ask why teachers should risk exposure to COVID-19 for a kid like this? Why should they put their lives on the line for students who make their jobs so difficult, when so many parents are uninvested in their own children’s education?
It’s because school is the only positive resource these children have and teachers are their saviors. Teachers are front-line workers, as essential as doctors, nurses and first responders. For some kids, teachers bridge the gap between total despair and hope.
Teachers who love their work understand their worth. For many of them, it is not a question of whether kids should return to school next month. It is a matter of how do we work together to make it happen safely and effectively?
They aren’t afraid of the challenges of COVID-19. They deal with much bigger problems every day in schools where poverty and violence persist. They understand their mission, and they are accustomed to pushing the limits.
With only half the normal student body allowed to attend school on a given day, classroom size would be significantly reduced. Students would be assigned to pods of approximately 15 students, meaning teachers could devote more time to the kids who need extra help with reading and math.
Students in K-10 would split their time between home and school. They would receive instruction in the classroom and complete their assignments at home. Such a setup would allow school officials to determine exactly which students have the necessary access to digital learning and address the shortfalls quickly.
And if COVID-19 releases its wrath again, schools would again shut down.
Regardless of what happens, a fair number of children still will fall through the cracks, as they always have. But reopening schools would provide a safety net to catch some of them before they crash and are too damaged to be saved.
This debate can’t afford to be mired in politics and angry taunts. Nor should it be guided by fear of the unknown. This is the time to focus on what know for sure — that our kids cannot thrive without school.
Adults have an obligation to work together and figure out how to give them what they need.
Twitter @dahleeng
———
©2020 the Chicago Tribune
Visit the Chicago Tribune at www.chicagotribune.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
