The vast majority of Chicago Public Schools students will continue learning from home until at least January as public health conditions worsen this fall because of the coronavirus pandemic, according to three sources with knowledge of the school system’s plans.
In a call with principals Thursday, officials said most of CPS’ 300,000 students at the 500-plus district-run schools won’t return for the second quarter of the academic year in early November as they had long hoped, sources said.
Preschool students and children in special education cluster programs, however, are returning to classrooms next month because of their unique difficulties with remote learning, sources said. A decision on all other students returning to in-person learning for the third quarter in January is still under consideration.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot and CPS officials have not made their plans public but said earlier this week that an announcement would come “very soon.”
The mayor and district leaders have long hoped that in-classroom schooling would be possible sooner than later. Over the summer, CPS unveiled a hybrid learning plan that would have sent most students back to school two days a week. That proposal was put on hold when the city saw a rise in COVID-19 cases and infection rates leading up to the school year, and officials said they would re-consider implementing that plan at the start of the second quarter Nov. 9.
Lightfoot said in late September that she was “very much concerned” about the long-term impact of teaching CPS’ youngest students remotely and had directed schools officials to develop “very specific plans for outreach to bring those children back into” the fold, hinting those kids could return to buildings.
There were 14,300 students enrolled in preschool programs at CPS last year. It’s still unclear how many are in the system this year and how strong of an impact the coronavirus pandemic has had on enrollment.
Special education cluster programs, meanwhile, are designed for students requiring a significantly modified curriculum with moderate to intensive supports in a separate classroom from general education classmates for a majority of the day.
In anticipation of an announcement, the Chicago Teachers Union, which has been adamant against reopening school buildings, tweeted that “a 3 p.m. meeting has been called for principals today, presumably for CPS and the mayor to inform school administrations of their plans to return SPED and early childhood ed students back to unsafe school buildings in November.”
