PARENT GROUPS QUESTION CPS PACE FOR REMOTE LEARNING

by Suzanne Hanney

Chicago Public Schools (CPS) students will be learning from home – remotely -- starting September 8, with both online classes and small-group assignments throughout a fully scheduled school day. Attendance will be tracked and assignments will be graded.

The school district distributed more than 128,000 computers last spring and will loan out another 36,000 devices to students who still need them before the school year begins. Roughly 100,000 CPS students from limited-income backgrounds also received high-speed internet at no charge thanks to the Chicago Connected initiative; eligible families have been contacted for this year and 35 community groups have been working to get them connected.

Guiding principles for this year are a high-quality learning experience for all students despite the changed environment, support in reducing inequities for high-need students, and minimizing anxiety around COVID-19, which has simultaneously revealed historical inequities. CPS officials say they gathered feelings about last spring’s remote learning from 58,000 parents in multiple surveys and 22 focus groups on the South, West and Southwest Sides.

“We remain committed to helping every student reach their full potential, even under these unprecedented circumstances, and we are confident that with your support, CPS will remain a school district on the rise,” CPS CEO Janice K. Jackson, EdD and Chief Education Officer LaTanya D. McDade said in an August 18 final reopening framework letter.

Not so fast, say Illinois Raise Your Hand and the Logan Square Neighborhood Association (LSNA). Raise Your Hand conducted its own survey of 1300 parents on remote learning, which was shared by over 50 community-based organizations, elected officials and parent groups. The survey was in six languages (English, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, Polish and Urdu) and represented 51 percent of CPS schools.

Parents of color comprised 60 percent of respondents and parents of students with special needs comprised 40 percent.

Two months into the pandemic, 130 parents in the Raise Your Hand survey (10%) still had concerns about the digital divide. “Parents found the process of remote learning disorienting and should not need to sleuth through numerous learning platforms, school websites, emails, parent groups, and social media to piece together what their child needs – this was especially true for parents with students at different schools,” Raise Your Hand said in its recommendations.

Special education and English Learners (ELs) were also badly served, according to the Raise Your Hand survey. Nearly 3 out of 4 (69%) of parents who had children with Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) or 504 accommodations plans, said they did not receive as much support as they would have liked to help their child reach their goals. Almost 100 parents (14% of those with IEPs surveyed) said they had no contact about their child’s IEP. More than half (55%) of EL parents said they did not receive as much support as they would have liked.

During an August 22 Zoom meeting hosted by Raise Your Hand and LSNA that was attended by more than 100 parents, the chat room filled quickly with a variety of complaints about remote learning:

• Not enough support for EL teachers

• Lack of compassion for working parents

• Lack of technology, since not all parents qualified for the Chicago Connected program

• Too much screen time and too little activity

• No small group sessions

• Attendance issues

“Back to school isn’t back to normal,” Raise Your Hand cautioned in its survey results. “A complete return to school must include how we are going to repair the harm caused by CO- VID-19. It is clear that across the country, students are suffering from significant learning losses.” Over 170 parents said they saw a need for more social workers, therapists, counselors and social-emotional learning staff. Another 70 parents said COVID had hurt their child’s ability to socialize. The parents also advocated for “working beyond the school walls”: with CPS offices that support families undergoing housing instability, food insecurity, unemployment or lack of health insurance.

The CPS plans for remote learning, meanwhile, are precise, and in line with Illinois-required minimum times. Pre-K students would have 60 minutes of real-time instruction and 90 minutes of learning activities. Pupils in grades 3-5 would have 205 minutes of instruction and 155 minutes of activities; those in grades 6-8 would have 230 minutes of instruction plus 130 minutes of activities. Secondary students would spend 80 percent of their day in real-time instruction and 20 percent on activities.

During the afternoon block, “Ms. Perkins,” a typical 4th grade teacher, would have 135 minutes available to meet with students, to develop learning activities, to complete lesson planning and other tasks. Since she would have to be available to her students for 75 minutes of that time, Ms. Perkins had created a weekly conference schedule where she used 60 minutes to meet with six of her students, two at a time. When conferences were not scheduled, Ms. Perkins would be available to any students or caregivers.

During the Zoom meeting, however, Raise Your Hand and LSNA argued for a back-to-school plan that was less hightech, and more high-touch.

Nearly four hours of real-time learning for 6th to 8th graders, for example, “does not meet the needs of most of our families,” they said, although the state of Illinois requires five hours of instruction for students in grades 2-12. “We can’t cover our eyes and pretend the pandemic doesn’t exist. There’s a lot of things we can do as a whole community to take care of our students.”

There is already a high demand for social workers that can’t be met, said Melissa, an LSNA community organizer.

Melissa suggested that teachers wearing masks meet outside with students, because many teachers do not live in their community and do not understand what the children are going through. “We believe that it is so important for teachers to go beyond the screen. Children are going through a lot of trauma. They are losing their homes. We are hard workers, just a community that is underserved.”

Melissa’s comments were taken from LSNA’s remote learning statement issued August 14 that called for teachers “to act as a union of 20,000+ social workers right now” because every student has been affected by some kind of trauma. Using the first few weeks of school solely for building relationships would give students a chance to share experiences and officials the time to make sure everyone’s IT needs are met. The students also need time for fun; they have missed being able to talk to each other without teachers around.

The northwest side organization also argued for “quality, not quantity” of live instruction. “Parents and high school students are working and/or busy taking care of several kids. We aren’t available to support our children for several hours of live instruction each and every day. No more than 1 or 1.5 hours of live instruction total per day for elementary. Aim for 30-minute live sessions. Do you know how much parents are struggling to keep our kids focused?”

LSNA also suggested one day off a week so that teachers had time off for outdoor home visits, 1 on 1 check-ins and “other radically relational wellness work,” which dovetails with LSNA’s own history. Teams of mentors could be assigned to schools and could check in with parents twice a month, in their own language, “like an educational doula.” Parents should be encouraged to advance as paraprofessionals and teachers.

LSNA created Chicago’s first Parent Mentorship program in 1994. The program expanded to the Southwest Organizing Project (SWOP) in 2001 and now includes 925 parent mentors in 117 schools, including some outside Chicago. LSNA also started the “Grow Your Own Teacher” program in 2004 to bring neighborhood faces back to teach in Chicago schools.