A Letter from a Lincolnwood Teacher

August 16th, 2020

Dear Lincolnwood Learning Community:

As we all sit around the dinner table trying to make sense of the world around us, safety is one of the topics that never seems to go away. I have been a teacher in Lincolnwood School District 74 since 2006, and currently teach 8th grade United States History/Civics at Lincoln Hall; I also am one of the co-presidents of the Lincolnwood Teachers Association (LTA). What a year to be asked to represent the faculty and maintain our positive relationship with the community and Board of Education! My wife (also a District 74 teacher) sometimes asks me, semi-jokingly: “Are you sure you want to do this?” We laugh it off, but I’m not always sure my answer is yes.

My purpose in this letter is to share some general feelings about safety that many colleagues of mine and members of our community also experience. Or more simply, some concerns that keep us up at night. If part of my job as a Social Studies teacher is to help young adults be civically engaged in our community, then I feel compelled to speak for those who are quietly and nervously watching.

District 74 began the discussion of the reopening challenges on June 18th, at the first meeting of the Back to School Committee. Most of us felt optimistic that we would quickly settle on a safe reopening plan, and the community would have the better part of July and August to begin planning. Well, as these times have shown, nothing is that easy. Fast forward to mid-August and we are still ironing out safety details on our reopening plan. Some of this delay might be due to some communication missteps, but is largely due to the difficulty of this endeavor.

Many in the community wonder if these difficulties were what led a number of our neighboring districts to pull back their reopening plans and instead opt for remote learning? One could say those districts didn’t want to do the hard work necessary to reopen, but it is possible that the hard work became too overwhelming and a slower approach was chosen. Either way, those districts gained two valuable things: One, time for teachers to take a breath and plan for robust remote lessons knowing that 100% of students would be present and would receive direct live instruction with 100% of their teacher’s attention. Two, more time for the district to work with faculty, staff, and the community to finalize the reopening in the safest way before bringing students back into the unknowns of this pandemic.

The majority of the community supports in-person learning and does not support a remote or hybrid start (half the students in attendance). We know that the communities in many of our surrounding villages also have a majority in favor of in-person learning, yet their districts pulled back on that. What do we know that they don’t? What have they figured out that we don’t agree with? How do we all use the same guidelines from the Illinois State Board of Education and the Illinois Department of Public Health, yet view the safety of our students and staff in such different ways? These questions are rhetorical of course, but these are things which many of us constantly ponder.

A large task to manage that will be ongoing throughout the school year will be the availability of quality substitute teachers. Last year at Lincoln Hall, there were numerous days when teacher absences were greater than available substitutes. We usually solved this by pulling a paraprofessional away from their special education group to cover an unfilled job. This problem solving will certainly be put to the test this year with a number of the staff taking partial or full time leaves on top of the regular absences that occur outside of a pandemic. The district will certainly find quality substitutes for the long term positions to the best of their ability. But will we be able to respond to the day-to-day substitute needs and possible quarantines that could occur, all while managing our safety measures?

At the end of the day, District 74’s reopening plan is an experiment. During the board meeting on Monday, August 10th, a number of references to this experiment were made. Our reopening was put in the context of “trying this out” with the kids at Todd Hall before bringing back the Lincoln Hall students. The view of some was that accepting the risk of the pandemic and their child’s social/emotional health was more important than the unknowns of the pandemic. These are understandable opinions, but they do make some of us rethink the phrase, “safety is the first priority.” Many of us wonder if the district’s first priority is, in fact, getting the students back to school. It seems like many of our neighboring districts which have chosen remote learning to slow down their reopening have come to a different conclusion about what the term “safety first” means.

My family is very aware of the hardships ahead for families that will have to negotiate their child’s remote learning situations. Our daughter’s school in our neighborhood in Chicago asked us to choose between a hybrid (two days in-person, three days remote) or all remote learning plan. We chose the hybrid plan for all the same reasons a District 74 parent chose in-person. Eventually, CPS changed their plan and moved over to all remote learning, which has left us with a lot of uncertainties on how we will fulfill our obligations as teachers in District 74 throughout the school year. But we can still take a breath, know (not experiment) that she’s safe, and start planning for the next stage of this saga.

Our biggest challenge with our choice today is there are no good options. The least safe option in terms of physical health is in-person learning, the option that many prefer. The safest option in terms of physical health is going remote. Unfortunately the option that is best for kids socially is the perhaps least safe for them and the overall community. How do we as a community determine what is safe when we can’t decide what safety means?

Although I do not represent the entirety of the LTA, I do know the majority of my colleagues share in these nervous feelings that have driven me to write this letter. I believe that some in our community do too. Thank you for taking time to hear me out.

Travis DuPriest
Lincoln Hall Middle School 8th grade Social Studies
LTA Co-President