It was Friday, March 13, and for teachers at Juliette Low Elementary School in Arlington Heights, the bad luck tied to the date proved prescient.
Concerns about the coronavirus had prompted Community Consolidated School District 59 to shutter its 15 schools through early April, leading the principal and social worker at Juliet Low — where 65% percent of students are from low-income families — to scramble to a nearby grocery store on their lunch hour, filling their carts with nonperishable foods.
“Every Friday, we send a group of our students … home with backpacks full of food, and so we had to ask ourselves, with schools closing, how can we continue to make that happen?” said Katie Ahsell, an assistant superintendent in District 59.
“We immediately called all of the families we know who are already struggling … and asked them, ‘What do you need from us?’ “
It’s a question that is keeping educators such as Ahsell awake at night, knowing that — for families who count on their kids’ schools for everything from student meals and mental health counseling to internet access and before- and after-school care — the coronavirus has shut the door on far more than just the buildings where learning takes place.
With the closure of all Illinois schools now extended to the end of April, districts are busy launching remote learning programs. But teachers, administrators and social workers have also joined forces behind the scenes to ensure that families have the needed support to navigate a global pandemic with unprecedented challenge.
From student and family wellness checks to virtual counseling sessions and meal deliveries, Chicago-area educators say they are determined to support students and their families during a public health crisis that has already wreaked economic devastation on many vulnerable communities.
During the inaugural week of its neighborhood-based nutrition program, launched because of the pandemic, Palatine-based Community Consolidated School District 15 has distributed more than 8,000 meals, with a fleet of school buses making dozens of daily stops at area schools and apartment complexes, said Renee Urbanski, executive director of second language programs.
With almost 40% of the district’s students coming from low-income families, the economic impact of the global pandemic has already taken a toll on the community, Urbanski said.
“The conversations I’ve had with people so far tell me there are already critical needs for our families, with many parents, like those who work at restaurants, now temporarily laid off from their jobs, and losing their incomes,” Urbanski said.
Even those who are still working suddenly have their children out of school during the day. And with many employed in service jobs, “they don’t have the option of working from home,” Urbanski said.
Indeed, in a district where families collectively speak more than 80 languages, and many are immigrants or refugees, Urbanski said its 20 neighborhood schools, serving more than 12,000 students, are seen by many as the heart of the community.
“We definitely have a high-level of trust placed on us as a school, and we are looked to as a place that can provide accurate information when parents have questions,” Urbanski said.
During one recent school bus food delivery run, a couple and their three young children picked up two days’ worth of breakfast and lunch at an apartment complex off Nichols Road outside Palatine.
They recently lost their household income after the father was laid off from his restaurant job, he explained in Spanish. He is hopeful his employer will hire him back once the coronavirus-related restrictions are lifted.
In Chicago Public Schools, where more than three-quarters of its 355,000 students are considered economically disadvantaged, schools have been handing out or delivering packages containing three days’ worth of breakfast and lunchto about 40,000 families a day.
“It has been shocking and sobering to see the need from many of our families,” CEO Janice Jackson has said.
At last week’s school board meeting, Jackson thanked facilities and nutrition staff, administrators and educators and everyone else “working tirelessly every day to make sure our families have what they need” during the pandemic.
“We will make sure that we provide the necessities to our families every single day,” she said.
Lissette Flores, a counselor at Grissom Elementary in Hegewisch on Chicago’s Far Southeast Side, said it’s been hard to know if she’s reaching her students, and she worries.
“We are really concerned about our students,” Flores said. “We are concerned about their mental health. This pandemic has really shaken up everyone and if it’s crazy for adults, you can only imagine how children are dealing with this, especially children who are more vulnerable.”
At school, Flores has access to her students all week long, and can see when something’s off. During the shutdown, she’s been able to communicate with them online, but it’s not the same. Plus, she has to depend on her young students checking their email more than some have been.
CPS has provided counselors with some resources to share with students, she said. But while she thinks upcoming e-learning training will be helpful for core subjects, it’s not the same for social-emotional support.
“When it comes to students getting support from their counselor, a lot of our work is confidential. It involves very sensitive topics of traumas they’ve experienced,” she said. “I have a really high caseload of students exhibiting symptoms of depression and anxiety, so a lot of my work goes into talking about developing different coping skills, practicing skills, mindfulness, and that’s really hard to do when it has to be done via email.”
The pandemic has also prompted the cancellation of after-school programs that would normally provide additional support to young people.
After School Matters, which serves more than 7,000 Chicago teens, has been trying to keep them engaged with newsletters, phone calls and Facebook live cooking and yoga lessons.
Students in the program receive stipends of a few hundred dollars as a way to remove barriers to participation for teens whose families may depend on them to supplement income or who may otherwise turn to trouble, said chief program officer Melissa Mister. For the spring session, which started in February, participants will still get all three installments.
Many instructors are mentors to the young people living in neighborhoods where violence is prevalent, and now they’re learning which electronic platforms are the most effective with students, Mister said. The organization is starting to track participation to make sure no one gets overlooked.
“It’s incredibly important, allowing kids to explore their interests, but also learn more generally applicable life skills,” she said. “They are calling to check in with teens, that’s an opportunity to say, ‘Hey, I noticed you didn’t respond to that email, did you get the newsletter.’ “
With school closures halting daily, in-person contact with more than 12,000 students, Arlington Heights-based Township High School District 214 was due this week to launch a remote academic learning and social-emotional support program that includes teachers holding a weekly video conference with each of their classes, District 214 Superintendent David Schuler said.
“We don’t want kids to feel socially isolated, even though they need to keep physically distant right now,” Schuler said.
For many suburban school districts, including Barrington District 220, the student demographics vary dramatically, with low-income rates ranging from about 3% at one school to about 87% at another.
Worries about the increasing hardships hitting low-income families, many of whom were already struggling before the coronavirus school closures, is troubling to administrators such as Beth Jones, District 220’s assistant superintendent of student services.
“The first few nights after schools closed, I was crying myself to sleep at night, because I couldn’t wrap my head around how we were going to make sure all of our students were receiving meals,” Jones said. “When students are coming to school, our teachers and social workers can lay eyes on the children and talk to them every day, to ensure they are physically and emotionally safe.”
District 220 teachers made plans to spend Monday making wellness calls to students and families, “checking in to make sure the kids are OK, getting a pulse to see how they’re doing and if they’re struggling with anything and need additional support.”
Principal Caitlin Lee of St. Gall School, a Catholic school in Chicago’s Gage Park neighborhood, said before the shutdown, teachers sent their students home with backpacks stuffed with library books and supplies such as notebooks, pencils and markers.
With 92% of her students from low-income families, Lee said that many do not have the digital tools or Wi-Fi in their homes, so school officials quickly rounded up and distributed dozens of laptops, tablets and hot spot devices to ensure that everyone has internet access.
Lee and her staff also raided classroom cupboards and school storage rooms for hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes, distributing them to families who swung by a special pickup zone outside the school.
While roughly half of the students in the primary grades and about 70% of those in junior high are participating in the school’s daily e-learning thus far, Lee said she and her staff will be reaching out to all of the families who are not, to see how they can help make that happen without causing added stress to the household.
“We’re trying to pinpoint the families we are not hearing from, and giving them wellness calls to make sure they have what they need,” Lee said. “If we weren’t social distancing, we could visit a student’s home like we always do, and knock on the door. But we’re not comfortable with our staff doing that right now.”
At the top of Lee’s call list is a single mom who works in public transportation and might be having trouble finding child care for her son, who would typically be at school during her shift.
“He’s in fourth grade, so kind of on the border age-wise, but it’s not ideal for him to be home alone, so those are the mysteries we’re all trying to figure out,” Lee said.
Schools are a trusted hub for low-income residents in need of essential services such as day care, meals, and referrals to medical, dental and mental health services, said Terri Sabol, an assistant professor at Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy.
“Low-income families are hit especially hard during economic downturns, and these increased hardships cause stress that can have a negative impact on parenting, which has a trickle-down effect on kids,” Sabol said.
Though students participating in remote learning from home can be challenging for many families, for the economically disadvantaged, the abrupt closure of schools can prove catastrophic.
“First and foremost, our priority is the public health impact of the coronavirus,” Sabol said. “But we also need to figure out ways to reduce the burden for low-income families who have lost their stable child care with schools closing, especially for those who are essential workers.”
Even when the pandemic subsides and schools reopen, students may continue to need extra support.
“A big part of this is about what happens next,” said Jackson, the CPS CEO. “There are some decisions that we are going to have to make in order to recover some of the loss of learning, to provide additional social-emotional support for our students. … We won’t know the full cost of this until this is over, and the cost will be far more than any dollar amount we could put out there.”
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