Ask elementary school principal Kathleen McGinn about her summer and she’ll respond: “What summer?”
For months, her school, Queen of the Rosary in Elk Grove Village, worked on a reopening plan under the guidelines issued by the Archdiocese of Chicago. School started last week with safety precautions in place that included masks, temperature checks, hand sanitizer and desks spaced apart or shielded with plastic. Furniture was removed from classrooms, soft chairs replaced with hard ones, and arrows and circles marked up the floors. The younger students carried hula hoops during recess to keep social distancing protocols in place.
It’s not exactly a regular school year.
Parents surveyed by the archdiocese, which serves more than 70,000 students in Cook and Lake counties, overwhelmingly wanted kids to have some in-person learning this year, even with the risks associated with COVID-19. So that’s what the archdiocese did. Schools could develop individualized reopening plans, and parents still had the option of all-remote learning. The archdiocese worked with the Chicago and Illinois public health departments, and continues to consult with experts in infectious diseases.
If only every school system operated so nimbly. In Chicago, where politics permeate everything, reopening schools has become a thorny issue. It also could have resulted in yet another strike by the Chicago Teachers Union, which opposed Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s initial hybrid plan for reopening Chicago Public Schools. Opposition from CTU pushed CPS officials to keep schools closed at least until November and offer remote learning only.
Even that’s not enough for CTU. Now it wants to dictate what private schools decide.
Groups allied with the union are pressuring the Chicago Archdiocese to shut down its schools too. Arise Chicago, a labor-organizing group affiliated with CTU and other unions, spoke out against the Roman Catholic schools’ reopening plan. “We believe that the archdiocese is putting people in danger,” Arise executive director the Rev. C.J. Hawking, a labor organizer, said at a news conference.
The group wants a response from the archdiocese by Tuesday. But really, the archdiocese owes them nothing.
The problem for critics is this: The archdiocese, parents and educators in the system are choosing to try in-person learning, fully aware of the risks. They know and are prepared to pivot if cases of COVID-19 force change. They’re ready for classrooms, perhaps schools, to temporarily shut down if needed. That’s part of the plan too.
“We can’t give anybody a 100% guarantee of anything,” says Justin Lombardo, who leads the archdiocesan COVID task force. “We’d love to be able to, but we’re listening to all the medical experts. There’s going to be a child who comes in with something, and we may have to close down a cohort. That’s going to happen no matter what we do.
“I would contend that every time I leave my condo to go to the store, I am assuming a certain type of risk. We’re in a pandemic.”
Nationally, school reopening plans vary widely. At schools that did not require masks or take extra precautions, kids and staff members have gotten sick, requiring a temporary switch to remote learning. In Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia and Indiana, schools have opened with starts and stops. Colleges also are experimenting with learning plans. Michigan State University switched to all remote learning after watching cases of COVID-19 increase earlier this month. The University of Notre Dame suspended in-person learning for two weeks after an outbreak linked to off-campus activities there.
Siobhan Haugh, a parent and school board member at St. Paul of the Cross School in Park Ridge, says she “is not worried” about sending her three boys back to school.
“There are risks with everything, and this is worth trying,” she says. “Lockdown was one thing, but once things started to open up, I had to get more comfortable with them doing things. We have to figure out how to live until there’s a vaccine.”
And kids have been getting out. They’re playing sports, getting together with friends, taking bike rides. If a child does come to school and then contracts COVID, there is no straight line to determining if the school building was the source.
CPS initially introduced a hybrid learning plan that would have provided kindergartners through sophomores with some days at school and some days at home. But CTU threatened a strike vote if the district moved ahead with the proposal. Citing the COVID threat, not pressure from the union, Lightfoot backed away from the hybrid model, even though remote learning in the spring was spotty at best. The diverse needs of the district make it difficult, if not impossible, for lower-income kids to have regular and reliable access to broadband and laptops. Still, it’s what the teachers union insisted.
But now CTU is upset at the remote learning option too. The union recently filed a grievance against the district for its remote learning framework, saying it was unimaginative and did not include enough input from teachers. (Never mind Chicago schools’ CEO, Janice Jackson, is a former CPS teacher.)
CPS and CTU will have to work out their differences. But Catholic schools have no obligation to explain or justify their reopening protocols to them. The archdiocese responded to its community of parents, teachers and staff on plans for the school year. The risks are known. Parents are ready to be flexible.
CTU: Stay in your lane.
Editorials reflect the opinion of the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board.
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