CPS to open school year online

Parent, teacher worries sway mayor; governor details IDES fraud

CPS CEO Janice Jackson, Mayor Lori Lightfoot, and Ald. Michael Scott (seen at a news conference last year) all defended the decision to move classes online to begin the school year next month. (One Illinois/Ted Cox)

By Ted Cox

Chicago Public Schools announced Wednesday they’d begin the academic year with remote learning.

CPS Chief Executive Officer Janice Jackson, Mayor Lori Lightfoot, and Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady all insisted the decision was based on science, given the uncertainty produced by rising cases of COVID-19, but they also allowed that worries expressed by parents and teachers tipped the scales.

“It was evident our families were not comfortable” with a proposal to begin the school year with a hybrid system with a couple of days a week in classrooms, Jackson said at a news conference at City Hall. “They did not feel this was the right time.”

Lightfoot said the decision was “rooted in the public health data and the science,” but granted that it was also dictated by “feedback we’ve received — mostly from parents and faculty.” She denied, however, that a demonstration staged this week by the Chicago Teachers Union outside City Hall, along with threats of a strike, had influenced her thinking.

Arwady said that newly reported daily cases and the city’s positivity rate on COVID-19 testing were both at manageable levels, but also were both on the rise from a month ago. Given the need for parents to begin planning for a school year set to start in a month, and the uncertainty given the rising number of infections at a level she labeled a “yellow zone” for caution, the decision was made to go remote for at least the first quarter of the school year through Nov. 6.

According to Lightfoot and Jackson, 100,000 CPS students are being provided free internet access in a bid to prevent students falling through the cracks, as some did in the spring. Jackson emphasized that grading would be back in force, while smaller online classes are being arranged for special-needs students and those using English as a second language.

Gov. Pritzker endorsed the decision at a COVID-19 briefing later in the day at the Thompson Center in Chicago. He pointed out that the Illinois Department of Public Health and the State Board of Education had issued guidelines to all school districts on safely returning to class, but emphasized that districts have to make their own decisions, as some have schools that are 100 years old, while others have schools that are more modern with more room for students to maintain social distancing, and all have to weigh the ability of their students to shift to online education. “These are things that have to be worked out at the local level,” he said.

Jackson said CPS athletics were mostly likely off the table for the fall.

Pritzker went on to detail problems at the Illinois Department of Employment Security and across the nation in rampant fraud in unemployment systems in the pandemic. Pritzker said the federal expansion of benefits to independent contractors, freelancers, and so-called gig workers under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance Program had been “poorly designed … opening the door for a nationwide fraud system.”

“Unfortunately, the virus rages on.”

Gov. Pritzker (Illinois.gov)

According to Pritzker, IDES is looking into 120,000 suspected cases of fraud — 107,000 of them in the PUA program — while a federal watchdog agency investigating fraud usually devotes 10 percent of its caseload to unemployment fraud, but now more than half of its cases are in unemployment.

Pritzker complained of “massive holes for illegal fraudsters to steal federal dollars from taxpayers across the country.” He advised anyone who’s received an IDES debit card or correspondence in the mail, without having applied for benefits, to report it through the IDES website, and that they should also consider that their personal information had been compromised.

Pritzker and Illinois Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike both renewed warnings on the increasing spread of the coronavirus statewide, as the state reported 1,759 newly confirmed cases Wednesday, bringing the Illinois total to 186,471, while 30 new deaths took the statewide toll to 7,573.

“Unfortunately, the virus rages on,” Pritzker said, adding that 10 of the state’s 11 regions under the Restore Illinois plan had testing positivity rates under 5 percent two weeks ago, but that dropped to just five last week and now four this week.

They said regions seeing rising infections could face new mitigation efforts, including the closing of bars and indoor dining at restaurants. They repeated calls for everyone to wear a mask in public, and warned that another stay-at-home order couldn’t be ruled out.

“I don’t want to go back there,” Pritzker said. “I don’t want to go to those statewide, more extreme measures.”