William Kingsbury is a senior, but he said it felt like his very first day as he stepped onto the vast Lane Tech College Prep campus Monday morning.
Kingsbury, 17, said he had no idea what to expect.
“I remember the first week (of lockdown). Nobody thought it was going to last this long,” he said. “Then a year later, here we are.”
He said he felt a little bit cheated. Before lockdown, he and other members of the robotics team had just finished their project and were getting ready to enter it into a competition. The pandemic killed that dream.
“It is what it is,” he said. “No one can control it.”
He unzipped his jacket to reveal a freshly laundered shirt.
“There are only 18 days of school,” he said, with smiling eyes. “I’m going to try to make sure I look good for each and every one of those days.”
Freshman Maggie Breede arrived with a backpack, her lacrosse stick and a jittery sense of excitement.
“It’s going to be fun,” she said, moments after her dad dropped her off. “I’ve never actually been inside for a whole day. So I’m probably going to get lost.”
She said she had some reservations about returning, but those melted away now that her grandparents have all been vaccinated.
“I feel more safe about it now,” she said. “I was really just worried about their safety.”
Monday marked the start of the fourth academic quarter and for the first time in 11 months all 515 non-charter schools — including high schools — were be open for in-person learning.
With 36% of high schoolers and nearly half of elementary school students planning to return, CPS could have up to 44% of its 279,000 students at non-charter schools in classrooms this week. Those 122,000 students would be by far the most since the start of the pandemic, although the 157,000 continuing remotely still represents a number larger than all but 15 districts in the nation.
About 26,000 high school students opted to return to in-person learning. Only three schools — all selective enrollment — will see a majority return, while half of the district’s 93 schools will welcome about one-third of students.
“This milestone has been more than a year in the making and is truly a cause for celebration,” CPS CEO Janice Jackson and district education chief LaTanya McDade said in an email to families Friday.
District officials, principals and some teachers have said this last academic quarter will make for a good test run for next fall and offers an opportunity to see what does and doesn’t work as the pandemic — hopefully — winds down.
Selective enrollment high schools expect largest turnout
Of the city’s 11 selective enrollment high schools, three are expecting a majority of their students back in classrooms: Payton, Jones and Whitney Young. Among those prestigious schools, those with more white students than any other race, tended to have more students back than those with mostly Black or Hispanic students, district records show.
Jones, Whitney Young, Lane Tech and Taft are the only schools with more than 1,000 students returning. Lane is expecting 2,100 back, and though that’s still less than half its students, it means more than 1,000 children will be in the building at the same time any given day with students split into Monday-Tuesday and Thursday-Friday cohorts.
With about two months left in the school year, the number of in-person days for high schoolers will range from 18 to 37. That’s out of 178 school days.
Contributing: Nader Issa
