Chicago Public School students in kindergarten through 5th grade will have more time to run around, play sports and be physically active thanks to a new law. Some Black and Brown parents are encouraged by the law, which became effective in July and requires elementary schools to provide a minimum of 30 minutes of recess. That’s 10 minutes more than the original requirement, according to Chicago Public Schools.
Quiwana Bell, a Bronzeville mother of 13-year-old Stephen and 11-year-old Austin, said it’s a step in the right direction. “(Recess) helps stimulate the brain,” Bell said. “It wakes them up and helps them get some of their energy out.”
Recess — a time for students to be physically active and engaged with their peers in activities — also improves memory, attention and concentration.
As the deadly Spanish Influenza killed 675,000 Americans between 1917 and 1920, that era’s Black healthcare practitioners took the initiative to help African-Americans avoid and recover from that flu because they saw that the public health system would not or could not do so.
Now, as America steps up its 2021 COVID19 vaccination phase, Black doctors and their HBCU (historically Black college and university) colleagues are again filling a void born of the same variants of systemic and structural racism their great grandparents experienced a little over 100 years ago. One example of the parallel is that in 1918, according to a study published in Public Health Reports, Dr. Nathan Francis Mossell, the Black medical director of Philadelphia’s 75-bed Frederick Douglass Memorial Hospital, established a 40-bed emergency annex at St. Peter Claver, a Black parochial school when his hospital beds were quickly exhausted by the Spanish Flu. Mossell got no funding for this from Philadelphia’s Board of Health, although the city had opened many emergency clinics for sick whites.
In early 2020, in response to the current COVID19 pandemic, Dr. James E.K. Hildreth, president and chief executive officer of Meharry Medical College, and other HBCU leaders sought and received $25 million in diagnostic and testing equipment from Thermo Fisher Scientific, which they initially used for COVID19 testing for students and faculty on their campuses, testing that was slow coming from other sources for these students and the communities they came from. “We’ll be having discussions on how to do this for the wider community,” Hildreth said. “We see an opportunity for the wider community to be enhanced. We’ve asked the Ways and Means committee of Congress for $5 million to allow medical schools to set up a consortium for a national testing approach.”
Hildreth also envisions a role for HBCU’s in making vaccinations more efficient for communities of color. “The solution is we must take the vaccinations to their communities, to meet the people where they are,” Hildreth said. “With the right training and coordination schools, churches and other community organizations could develop model field hospitals for testing and vaccinations, and once we have an easy to transport vaccine, we can use a mobile approach—medical vans that will extend the reach of vaccines and testing.”
Other Black doctors share Hildreth’s view that Black people and other people of color suffered a big spike in infections and deaths early in 2020 because they were never surveyed or tested properly early on. Health officials, they asserted,, simply surveyed and tested areas and locations where Black folks do not congregate so they got missed, and studies support their conclusion
In December 2020, a study of public health departments was published in the Journal of the NPS Center for Homeland Defense and Security in conjunction with NCCU (North Carolina Central University), an HCBU in Durham, North Carolina.
This study outlined troubling details about the readiness of public health departments across the country in terms of dealing with a pandemic like COVID19.
The study showed that state and local public health departments were steadily cut in size and scope as state legislatures cut state and local taxes.
After an ongoing conflict between Mayor Lori Lightfoot and the Chicago Teachers Union to reopen schools for in-person learning during the pandemic, education advocates argue that tensions between Chicago Public schools and the CTU wouldn’t have arisen if the Chicago Board of Education was elected and more responsive to the community. CTU approved a back-to-school deal with support from close to 55% of its members after teachers argued that the initial reopening plan fell short of safety expectations. The reopening debate has renewed energy around an elected school board for the Chicago Board of Education as CPS is the country’s third-largest school district and the only district in Illinois with an appointed school board. “I think an elected school board would make a huge difference because the school board will be responsive to public demand,” said Jitu Brown, national director of the Journey for Justice Alliance. “We know that the majority of the district is Black and brown and they’re not sending their children to school right now.
Good mental health is the ability to adapt to changes and stress. Whatever school looks like, parents can help keep kids’ social-emotional development on track in these four areas.
La mayoría de los estudiantes tendrán una combinación de educación en persona y a distancia, pero los detalles dependen del grado y situación de aprendizaje de cada estudiante. CPS pide comentarios hacia su propuesta. Esta herramienta te permite analizar cada uno de los escenarios.
Most students will do a mix of in-person and remote learnings, but the details depend on a student’s grade level and learning situation. CPS is looking for feedback on its proposal and this tool lets you zoom in on each of the different scenarios.
School buildings notoriously shuttered by Chicago Public Schools in 2013 could now be used to facilitate classroom social distancing, especially in communities hardest hit by COVID-19.
Despite common ground with Mayor Lori Lightfoot, disagreement on Chicago Public Schools’ financial position and who manages control over staffing decisions is pushing the teachers union to strike.
I would rather teach and be in the classroom but I’m ready to strike — for every single one of my students, for all my future students and my two sons in CPS.
New York City could be on the verge of dismantling gifted programs at its elementary and middle schools. Taking that step could make things even worse for some of the children it aims to help.
Graduates of historically black colleges and universities make more than peers who went to other schools, according to new findings that refute prior research that showed they suffer a ‘wage penalty.’
