Limited Access, Low Enrollment Rate: Parents in Chicago Criticize ‘Confusing and Chaotic’ Virtual Academy Process

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Chicago mom Debora was caught off guard last week when she received the first of two phone calls connected to the district’s new Virtual Academy.

The district needed to know if she wanted to enroll her daughter in an online class this fall, the caller said, assuring Debora with a scripted speech that her daughter was “on the list” of students to contact.

But while the second year of CPS has a long list of medical accommodations, she doesn’t qualify for the Virtual Academy and doesn’t want to attend.

Many families are clamoring for a distance learning option, said caller Debora, who has asked Chalkbeat not to disclose her last name and her daughter’s school name for privacy concerns. Why don’t you offer them the Virtual Academy?

The caller was unable to answer this question, but returned later to inform Debora that the district was considering other Virtual Academy applications on a case-by-case basis.

Debora still doesn’t know how her daughter got on this list, or what the district’s policies are for hosting the incoming Virtual Academy class.

“This is not how you run a project,” Debora said. “Everything seems confusing and chaotic, how can parents make decisions? ”

Chicago Public Schools will be offering a Limited Virtual Academy for students with specific medical needs this fall, but so far plans are unclear, enrollment is lukewarm, and parents have had to squeeze each other for more. details. District spokespersons say they can’t provide information about the Virtual Academy until more students register, but parents say they won’t register their children until they register. they will not have familiarized themselves with the design of the online school.

Still others are excluded from the Virtual Academy application process, leaving them to seek more creative alternatives, as the delta variant causes a spike in cases.

As of early last week, only 150 of the 3,000 students the district determined eligible had applied to the Virtual Academy, and the district was expecting only a few hundred more applications, a Chicago spokesperson said. Tribune. Chalkbeat asked Chicago public schools for more updated numbers, but the district has not provided them at the time of publication. The deadline to apply was August 6.

School districts across the country are grappling with whether to offer remote options to families and what restrictions should be placed on them. While stressing the need to fully open schools, the Illinois Board of Education said school districts across the state must provide a distance learning option for students who are not eligible for the vaccines, but did not offer much more detail.

CPS teachers will be on staff at the Chicago Virtual Academy, which will only serve medically fragile students next year as their peers resume learning in person. To be eligible for this year’s academy, students had to prove they had a health problem on one of two lists: students who belong to the first group, which includes certain cancers and cystic fibrosis. , are automatically admitted to the Virtual Academy, while students in the second group, which includes asthma and diabetes, are only eligible if their attendance last year was less than 75%. According to school board documents, the district is likely to expand and continue to run the Virtual Academy in the years to come.

While some parents like Debora are wary of the plan that is on the table, others argue for a remote option say they have been stranded by the district and feel hopeless and scared for the year ahead. .

Some parents of eligible students say they won’t enroll because they know next to nothing about how the District Virtual Academy works and have been left out of the planning process. Among their questions: what will the school program look like? How will the academy engage students with IEPs? If a student or family changes their mind, can the student re-enroll in a brick and mortar school? What if a student cannot enroll in the Virtual Academy, but a family member has a serious medical condition?

With 20 full days left until students return to class, parents are pushing the district for answers. Many are pushing for a distance option open to more students. A few question whether they should withdraw their students from CPS altogether, a problematic prospect for a district already facing a steep drop in enrollment.

District leaders say a return to in-person learning is essential to address learning loss due to a pandemic. They are bound by a state education council resolution passed in May, which requires school districts to reopen school buildings with a few exceptions. Funding is also part of the picture. This year’s CPS budget draws on more than $ 1 billion in federal stimulus money, the Biden administration has repeatedly stressed that it should be used to reopen classes in the fall.

For some families, however, the return to in-person learning raises concerns for the safety of their children.

Crystal Lam’s daughter, a first-grader at James Ward Elementary School, has no underlying health condition that would qualify her for the Virtual Academy, but the six-year-old suffers from severe allergies, which means it has to take off. his mask to blow his nose permanently.

With the increase in the number of delta variant infections, every part of the in-person school day seems worrying for Lam. Six-year-olds cross paths all the time. They need practical help with projects. They have to unmask for lunch. What would that mean, she wonders, for viral transmission among an entirely unvaccinated age group?

“There are so many questions on my mind,” Lam said. “And the closest [the reopening] comes, the more terror I feel in my stomach. ”

She is tempted to remove her children from the district and home school them. But she is afraid her daughter will lose her seat to James Ward. The district guarantees students enrolled in the Virtual Academy that their seats will be retained until they return to class, but the same promise does not apply to families taking a break in the district.

Meanwhile, some parents of Virtual Academy eligible students say they won’t enroll because the program doesn’t meet their child’s medical needs.

Nicole Abreu, a parent of the SPC who also sits on the board of the parents’ advocacy group Raise Your Hand, said she would not enroll her daughter, who suffers from epilepsy and rare neurological conditions, to the ‘Virtual Academy. Her daughter’s health fluctuates between stability and emergencies, which can deprive her of school for weeks. Abreu wants her daughter to learn in person in fourth grade at Friedrich L. Jahn Elementary School, but she is unsure whether a medical crisis could jeopardize her attendance, and the district’s policy to enroll in the Virtual Academy. does not give it flexibility.

“That’s the whole interest of medically fragile children,” Abreu said. “A lot of them have complicated conditions which are very individualized and very unpredictable in some cases.”

When Abreu raised this point with a district official who asked him to enroll in the program, he was told that decisions would be made on a case-by-case basis. “

Brenna O’Brien, CPS parent of a second-grader and a fourth-grader who has an IEP, says the Virtual Academy is a “black box” with little or no transparency and that the uncertainty is especially pronounced for students with IEP. These students often work with teams of staff members and build on the strong relationships they have built over time. She is concerned that the Virtual Academy will make the relationships and structure of the school day disappear for some diverse learners. Nothing she heard from the district assured her otherwise.

O’Brien is organizing with a group of parents to request a more accessible remote option until the first term, or until all students are eligible to be vaccinated.

“It’s so confusing and frustrating, but I refuse to unsubscribe because public education is a public right,” O’Brien said. “As soon as parents leave the system, they have no voice.”

In the meantime, she refreshes the neighborhood website every morning, browsing for more details, updating whatever.

Each time, she encounters the same fall 2020 reopening plan and a message: “Check back soon for more information. “

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat, a nonprofit news organization covering public education. Subscribe to their newsletters here.

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