McCormick Place, Park District fieldhouses could be alternative sites for CPS classes, alderman says

Mayor Lori Lightfoot is determined to reopen Chicago Public Schools on time this fall but do it safely, perhaps by using staggered schedules to maintain social distance and limit the number of students in classrooms.

SHARE McCormick Place, Park District fieldhouses could be alternative sites for CPS classes, alderman says
Ald. Michael Scott, Jr. (24th) speaks during a press conference at Daniel Webster Elementary School on the West Side, Monday morning, Aug. 26, 2019.Ê| Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

Ald. Michael Scott, Jr. (24th) said Thursday he is open to being creative with how CPS students return to school in the fall and deal with the need to continue social distancing.

Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

The chairman of the City Council’s Education Committee on Thursday said McCormick Place, Navy Pier, Park District field houses and public libraries could be used as alternative sites to safely reopen Chicago Public Schools this fall.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot is determined to reopen the Chicago Public Schools on time this fall but do it safely, perhaps by using staggered schedules to maintain social distance and limit the number of students in classrooms at any given time.

She has promised to be creative in crafting plans in concert with neighborhood leaders, perhaps by using community centers as alternate learning sites.

Now, Lightfoot’s hand-picked Education Committee chairman is being really creative — by suggesting the massive McCormick Place complex.

McCormick Place can’t host conventions until there’s a vaccine for the coronavirus, or a “highly effective treatment widely available” or the elimination of any new cases over a sustained period.

“I don’t know if you’ve ever watched ‘Shameless.’ But on ‘Shameless,’ they model McCormick Place as a university that people come in and use because of its beauty,” Ald. Michael Scott Jr. (24th) told the Sun-Times Thursday.

When a reporter suggested McCormick Place as a possible alternative site for in-classroom learning while maintaining social distance, Scott called it a “great idea” that should be explored.

“Navy Pier also has convention hall space that may be able to be used. The Park District may be an opportunity [also] because there are a lot of [field houses] that are close to schools. Libraries may be another option. And then, you have big facilities like McCormick Place,” Scott said.

“The problem, though, is the ratio of teachers-to-students. If the science dictates that there can only be a certain amount of children, then you can’t split a teacher in half and make a teacher be in two places at one time.”

McCormick Place’s South Building is among the sections of the convention center that was converted to hold coronavirus patients exhibiting mild symptoms. In the end, the field hospital treated few patients.

With no conventions coming to town for awhile, it’s worth exploring whether McCormick Place could be used by CPS for classes, one alderman said Thursday.

AP

Scott said he has asked CPS to have “more regular dialogue” with students, their parents and teachers to “talk about their concerns about reopening” with an eye toward “putting a comprehensive plan in place” that suits as many students as possible.

“There are going to be some potholes,” Scott said, but the goal needs to be making sure “students, parents, teachers, faculty feel comfortable about being in a situation where we’re reopening.”

McCormick Place spokeswoman Cynthia McCafferty was taken aback by the idea of turning the convention complex into an alternative school site. During the pandemic, the convention hall was converted into an overflow hospital site that went almost entirely unused.

“This is the first we have heard of the idea. We would need further information in order to determine feasibility,” she wrote in an email to the Sun-Times.

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Scott acknowledged potential complications involving the many trade unions that keep the convention complex up and running.

“I know there is a lot of space there that is under-utilized, and it is something that may work. [But] I don’t know what the numbers look like because, once you open up McCormick, you’ve got a lot of union issues,” he said.

“I don’t know how that works. Being in that trade atmosphere, you’ve got to have money coming in to make sure that the folks that are there that are running the place that are the laborers and electricians and all that kind of stuff — they have to have money. That’s where the trade shows come in.”

Remote learning has been an uneven and dubious replacement for in-person instruction and has left scores of students entirely disconnected from their teachers, according to long-awaited data released by CPS last month.

Fewer than 60% of all CPS students are engaging with online remote learning three or more days per week. Vulnerable populations, such as kids who are homeless and black and Latino students whose families have been disproportionately hurt by the coronavirus pandemic, are logging on at lower rates.

Tens of thousands of students aren’t being reached by their schools at all despite computer and internet access having largely been achieved.

Scott was not at all surprised by those results, which made a school year disrupted by an 11-day teachers strike even worse.

“I’ve got three children. And it is much better to have them sitting in class in front of teachers if the science dictates that that’s going to happen,” he said.

“But we have to be careful. We don’t want a spike. We don’t want our children sick. We don’t want our teachers sick.”


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