‘We don’t want to fall behind’ says group of Whitney Young students as they study through strike

With college application deadlines looming and school extracurriculars put on pause, a small group of Whitney Young High School students headed to Harold Washington Library Friday, determined not to fall behind.

Alex Burr, a senior, had been at the library since 11 a.m., first working on college application materials and later meeting with fellow members of the executive board of the Science Olympiad club, whose teams participate in a series of rigorous events that focus on the different branches of science at competitions in the city and suburbs.

The group had nearly 300 tests to go through to determine which students who tried out for the Olympiad will make the cut and where they will be placed.

“We’re sifting through a lot of data,” Burr said.

In the absence of activities at their school, Burr said students were organizing themselves, so that when they return they’ll be able to pick up where they left off. The cross country team, Burr said, was putting together their own practices, too.

“We don’t want to fall behind,” Burr said.

John Bradwell, another member of the group, said he felt the same way.

“If this does keep going, then it might really affect me,” he said.

Bradwell, a senior who plans to study engineering and is applying to nearly a dozen colleges and universities, said he already has a lot of his applications in. He doesn’t expect the strike to last much longer, but said he would become more concerned the closer it gets to the end of the month, when his teacher recommendations are due.

His teachers, he said, aren’t supposed to be talking with students or checking their email while on strike. That means no recommendations, a critical part of the process.

Burr was also concerned about that. Some schools Burr had applied to had emailed to let applicants know that the teacher recommendations could be turned in late without penalty due to the strike.

Still, Burr didn’t seem like the type of student that would feel good about missing any deadlines.

“I want to study molecular and cellular biology,” Burr said. “I love studying protein signaling.”

Another student, sophomore Adela Jianu, said she plans to study physics and wants to work as a university professor some day. She has four AP courses this semester and feels she has to continue to keep up with her studies during the strike, lest she risk falling behind due to the unrelenting pace of the classes.

Still, having a few days break wasn’t the worst thing.

“I can relax a bit,” she said.

These high-achievers, examples of some of Chicago Public Schools’ brightest students, all said they felt supported by their teachers and believed they were getting a good education.

“CPS has some of the best schools in the country,” a fourth member of the group, Margo Cicero, said. “I would rather be in school right now.”

But the group also acknowledged not all schools in the system are like Whitney Young, a selective enrollment school not far from the University of Illinois at Chicago campus that students must test into.

Bradwell, who lives on the Southwest Side and attended Richard Edwards Elementary School, said he believed it was one of the city’s most crowded at the time.

At Whitney Young, the opportunities he had to meet new people from different backgrounds was “mind-blowing,” he said. “Our schools are definitely segregated.”

But even at Whitney, he said, the students have a nurse in the building only a few days a week and their classes can have more than 30 students. Bradwell carries an inhaler at all times for his asthma. Having a full-time nurse at every school makes a lot of sense, he thought.

Most students, the group said of themselves and their peers, support the teachers strike. Still, they hope they don’t lose too much education time.

“We already start later than a lot of other schools,” Cicero said of CPS beginning the school year after Labor Day. “That means we’re already weeks behind.”