THE STRAIN OF REMOTE LEARNING ON STUDENTS IN TEMPORARY LIVING SITUATIONS
From left, leader Bridgette Barber, Education Attorney Alyssa Phillips, and Organizer Bisma Shoukat at a CPS back-to-school training. (Photo by Claudia Cabrera from the CCH website)
by Suzanne Hanney
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Remote learning last spring in the Chicago Public School (CPS) system “was very very challenging” for Students in Temporary Living Situations (STLS), who are often living doubled up with friends, says Alyssa Phillips, education attorney with The Law Project at the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. “One of the big issues was just actual physical space. If they were living doubled up or in a shelter, it can be difficult for a child to find a place to do work. There was a lack of access to technology. CPS did eventually provide access to computers and hot spots but until then, they were trying to work on a phone or get paper copies. A lot of families might have a device but not minutes on it, a data plan. We had some parents who were trying to get students to do this work on their smart phones or using their smart phones as a hot spot.” After remote learning started in March, it took about a month for families to start accessing technology. CPS loaned out about 128,000 Chromebooks last spring and signed up 100,000 low-income students for high-speed internet at no charge via the Chicago Connects initiative. However, once CPS agreed to distribute these laptops through the schools, there were families who didn’t have transportation to reach the schools to get the computers. If students were staying with a grandparent or great-aunt, their caretakers didn’t always have the computer literacy to help them log on to the CPS portal. And if they were staying at a shelter, the wifi would crash because so many students were trying to log on, Phillips said.
The 2019-20 school year ended with 16,451 Students in Temporary Living Situations (STLS), according to CPS, but “we definitely believe there will be quite a big number of newly homeless families when the eviction moratorium ends, and just with COVID-19 in general” going into the new school year, Phillips said. “Even during periods where in-person instruction is suspended, school is often the safest and most stable part of life for a child experiencing homelessness,” according to guidance issued by the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) on how to best support students experiencing homelessness this year. The ISBE paper was written by Phillips and The Law Project of CCH, with input from CCH leaders who are parents or grandparents of school-age children with lived experience of homelessness. McKinney-Vento liaisons, and national partners, also contributed to the essay. Regardless of remote learning status, “it is more important now than ever that schools serve in the role of community hub and align delivery systems to ensure that the needs of students and families are holistically addressed,” according to the ISBE paper. For example, every CPS student can access free breakfast and lunch, which may be the only meals for a student experiencing food instability. CPS has a waiver that allowed them to distribute the food. A family could go and pick up two to three meals; if the families couldn’t get to the schools, the meals would be delivered. “It was a really awesome, super vital service for students,” Phillips said. “Our request is that as long as distance learning continues, that students have access to that.” The McKinney-Vento Homeless Act requires that each child experiencing homelessness has equal access to the same free, public education as any other child. “Schools have the affirmative duty to identify the student,” Phillips said. “It’s not on the student.”
