Chalkbeat Chicago

Teachers upped the pressure on the district to reach an agreement by refusing to report to classrooms Wednesday and Thursday.

Sen. Kimberly Lightford said she will sponsor the mayor’s bill for a partly elected and partly appointed “hybrid” board. But Wednesday, Lightford criticized a bill to create a fully elected board, then voted for it.

The dynamic in a city deeply segregated by race and wealth has long contributed to the inequalities among schools.

A key state House committee passed the bill this week, but opponents want to reduce the size of the board or seek a hybrid model with some members appointed and others elected.

LaTanya McDade, the second-in-command at Chicago Public Schools, will be the next chief of Prince William County Public Schools in Virginia.

The district has asked each high school to form a campus safety committee to make recommendations.

Officials are calling back most teachers this spring and have reported an uptick in the number of families signing up for in-person learning.

CPS plans to spend the money across three years to expand the number of behavioral support teams from 200 schools to closer to 500 and enlist more help from community groups through grants.

The district said Tuesday that April 19 is a “target” date and negotiations with the teachers union, which have been productive, are ongoing.

The goal will be to test symptomatic students or those who had close contact with a person who tested positive for the virus, and to use surveillance testing to catch students who may be asymptomatic.

Chalkbeat Chicago caught up with four fourth graders who, like millions of students, have seen their school system roiled by change.

With roughly a third of Chicago teachers currently working from home, the scenario of in-person students learning with a virtual teacher has been one of the inevitable compromises families and educators have faced.

Almost 61,000 students in prekindergarten through eighth grade as well as some high school special education students are expected in school buildings by the end of next week, when the district will bring back the middle grades.

Of the more than 10,800 teachers expected to report for in-person learning so far, the district granted 3,750 accommodations.

Chalkbeat Chicago received more than 350 responses from families and students citywide.

CPS expects about 60,700 students in the elementary grades and in intensive special education programs to learn in school buildings by mid-March — slightly fewer than 30 percent of the eligible students.

CPS budgeted more than $1 million for its COVID-19 notification and contact tracing system, which includes a new district-level team and several online reporting programs.

The district also wants employees to disclose whether they have been vaccinated.

Schools chief Janice Jackson stressed the importance of moving away from remediation in addressing learning loss. The focus should be on providing students below grade level more resources to accelerate learning, she said.