Public Service Loan Forgiveness: What Is It & Why It Needs to Stay, by William Heikkinen

Posted on November 1, 2020 by Jennifer Babisak

One of the most cited and debated topics on the 2020 Presidential campaign trail is the fate of student loans. In today’s political sphere, generally a Democratic candidate may be known to be pro student loan forgiveness (or pro fiscal spending), and a Republican candidate may be known to be anti-student loan forgiveness (and anti-fiscal spending). However, not much more is often known on each candidate’s plan to tackle this contentious and amorphous issue.

As we move into the final days before the presidential election, many people saddled with student loan debt wonder how nominee Biden and President Trump compare on student loan forgiveness. While Presidential nominee Biden’s proposals fall a little further in line with Sen. Warren and Sanders’ popular and well-known plans, he maintains stark differences in who and what types of loans may be eligible. Likewise, President Trump, and his Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, have made it very clear in their attempted shrinking of the U.S. Education Department that they intend to collect all outstanding and future student loans through a continued income weighted repayment plan.

The sheer size and complexity of the student loan crisis prohibits any one blog from being written convincingly and succinctly enough to be a worthwhile read without honing in on a specific facet of this nationwide epiDEBTic. Thus, I will focus on one aspect of this financial crisis: The Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program (PSLF). The PSLF is an integral program for borrowers to “pay” off their debt by providing essential and often thankless public services, and this program is worth being examined further.

What IS the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program (PSLF) and Its Ensuing History?

The Public Service Loan Forgiveness program was signed into law in 2007 by President George W. Bush and offers a pathway to loan forgiveness for borrowers who are “full-time employed in eligible federal, state, or local public service jobs and made 120 on-time payments to their loans over a period of 10 years.” Even if a prospect for forgiveness left an eligible role, their eligible payments made would remain paused at the current number until that employee re-entered a qualified position. The program includes any full-time employees at not-for-profit organizations that are tax-exempt under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Typically, recipients of loan forgiveness under the program include members of the Armed Forces, Civil Servants, Public Defenders, and those acting in full-time capacity with AmeriCorps or the Peace Corps.

The extremely popular bipartisan program was put into place to inspire graduates to enter the public workforce without loan paralysis. While other professions may also offer forgiveness programs to the scores of employees entering their field, the PSLF widely encompasses the most vital and oft rewarding domain of benevolences.

As of 2019, over 99% of applicants to receive public service loan forgiveness were denied. Many of the applicants were not being rejected for missing the mark on their public service, but rather on confusion and misinformation on which types of loans were eligible and which repayment plans an applicant could enter (over 53% of applicant rejections were due to nonqualifying payments). There are numerous reasons for these failures, and luckily, slowly the government has made attempts to alleviate the otherwise “guaranteed not to turn pink in the can!” feel of the PSLF program. The income-based repayment plans, such as the Income-Based Repayment (since 2009), Pay As You Earn (since 2013), and Revised Pay As You Earn (Since 2016), are all more easily understood and successfully invoked than the previous Income-Contingent Repayment plan.

Direct Loans, the only loans eligible for this program, became the primary loan type in 2010 by replacing the Federal Family Education Loan program that was composed of private lenders providing federally guaranteed student loans. By 2012, the government began to offer prospective forgivees the Employment Certification Form for use every year to track eligible progress under the program. In case none of the previous options allowed borrower participation, Congress attempted to remedy this astounding rejection statistic by passing the Temporary Expanded Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, to help allow those that were subject to a previously ineligible repayment plan. With each passing year the number of eligible borrowers and current applicants grows. With each additional amendment to the otherwise illusionary program, there is hope that the acceptance rate will skyrocket ten to twenty-fold over the next four years and continue trending for its purposed use well into the next administration…

What are the two candidates saying about PSLF?

Joe Biden

When it comes to the PSLF, VP Biden does not shy away from the prevailing majority view of his political party. On his campaign site, VP Biden shows support for the 2019 “What You Can Do For Your Country Act” brought forth by Senators Tim Kaine and Kristin Gillibrand. The Act, among numerous other helpful changes to the existing PSLF program, includes stopgaps to common mistakes, 50% forgiveness at five years (instead of all or nothing at 10+), and allowing all types of federal loans to qualify under the program. Even further, VP Biden currently pledges to support a new program that would allow for up to $10,000 a year forgiveness for up to five years of national or community service work. While it doesn’t match the trillion+ plan to forgive EVERYTHING student loan orientated as Senator Sanders’ plan did, Presidential nominee Biden’s $750+ billion plan to help students certainly doesn’t add to the current crisis and makes a full-fledged effort to begin to eradicate some of the major underlying issues. It is not in any way an understatement to say that Biden’s plan strongly opposes his Republican counterparts’ current and future plans regarding the same program.

Donald Trump

In turn, Donald Trump and Education Secretary Betsy Devos have made clear their intentions to end the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program as part of a proposed $5.6 billion cut in funding to the U.S. Education Department. Specifically, they plan to cut the PSLF entirely to future borrowers and applicants, currently grandfathering in those involved with the program in real time. Just this past February, President Trump stood with Devos and proposed total elimination of the program under his proposed budget, with the potential to then be passed by congress. His stated reasoning has been simple: eliminating the program will save the federal taxpayers from having to forgive billions of dollars of federal student loans.

Instead, Trump has proposed a plan that will act for both public and private employees as one that would forgive federal student loans for undergraduate borrowers after 15 years of student loan payments. Currently, borrowers can get relief after 20 years (undergraduate) and 25 (graduate). Trump’s current plan does not include any relief for those with graduate loans. While it is still unclear if this budget will be signed, or if these proposals and ideas will live through this Tuesday’s election, one thing is for sure: the Trump Administration does not see the student loan crisis as one that is worthy of any sort of taxpayer relief, unlike the 400 wealthiest Americans were deemed to be.

What I believe is the correct path forward

Both Vice President Biden and President Trump have spoken about the PSLF program in their plans for election and reelection. These plans vary significantly and would chart a very different path to loan repayment for current and future borrowers. The whole idea of the PSLF program was to entice graduating college and university students into public sector jobs that this country relies on. When the private firm or corporation comes in with the six-figure offer just out of school, it can certainly be tough to pass over. You may have taken out $200,000 in loans over the course of your undergraduate and graduate education, and all you can think about is that grace period ending six months (and not a second more) after graduation day. The saving grace is the PSLF program. It allows you to not compromise your goals, dreams, and wishes if they happen to be in the public realm. Your Peace Corps volunteer, public defender, and firefighter all may be working for “Big Corporation C” if not for PSLF.

It is not the abolition of this program that we need, but rather the enhancement. We all want the very best public parks and services, servants, teachers, and more for ourselves, our spouse, and our children, but we don’t always want to pay for it. The PSLF can keep everyone happy by allowing those drowned in debt to continue to stimulate their local economies with the small price of a discounted education. The PSLF program needs to become more inclusive, more renowned, and more available to the selfless servants in American society.

William Heikkinen is a student at Loyola University Chicago School of Law and wrote this blog post as part of the Education Law Practicum.

 

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A Call to Action: Chicago Public Schools Must Adopt a Trauma-Informed Approach, By Tatiana Duchak

Posted on September 19, 2020 by Jennifer Babisak

Every day, Elijah* walks to the corner bus stop.  

Normally, he would board the 112 bus and ride the 20 minutes to school.  Today, however, he will walk.  Walking will make him late, but Elijah walks anyway.  

Elijah has his headphones in as he weaves in between cross-streets and crosswalks.  The beat behind the music pulsing, louder and louder, like his own heartbeat.  

The pounding rhythm in his ears simultaneously takes Elijah away from his world and his problems, while also reminding him that the repetitious pulse (he describes it while tapping the desk, “ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom”) could also be silenced at any moment without notice. 

Every day, Elijah walks to the corner bus stop.

The bus stop sits across the street from a beauty shop where his mother and sister were shot and killed, without reason, one day in the middle of the fall. At times, if he examined it too long, Elijah could still see the shattered glass from the broken window shimmering in the sun, like diamonds bathing the sidewalk.  He might smile at this thought, recalling the way his sister obsessively wore bedazzled shirts and shoes, jeweled earrings and headbands.  At times, he could almost picture his mother aimlessly wandering the aisles for hair combs and eyebrow pencils, hopelessly unaware she was taking her last breaths.   

Elijah first sat in front of my desk after being placed on a list of students with below-average attendance.  He had accumulated numerous tardies and absences, and he overall seemed less than motivated to attend school.  He was midway through his senior year, and his grades continued to decline, as they might for a student who is rarely in class.   

Elijah mindlessly fidgeted with items on my desk as he mentioned how he walks to school.  As the school’s only therapist (we have a licensed social worker, but his job is primarily addressing the needs of students receiving special education), “behavioral issues” were a common reason for referral.   

I gently asked Elijah if there was someone else who could take him to school, and that turned into a pause, and that turned into the story of the bus stop.  Over the course of several months, Elijah’s presence in my office increased.  At first, he would reluctantly stop by for a quick check-in to let me know he made it to school.  As trust and respect developed and he shared more, an exquisite young man blossomed before me.  I began to see who Elijah was before the trauma, without the pain, hurt, and defensive wounds.  I saw glimpses of the kid hiding beneath grief and loss, who still loved The Fresh Prince of Belaire and playing Uno, who was compassionate and wondered aloud if maybe he could become a veterinarian or baseball coach. 

Urgent Need for Trauma-Informed Care 

The current need for trauma-informed care and services is unprecedented.  The COVID–19 pandemic and the social unrest occurring after the death of George Floyd have brought unparalleled circumstances of fear, anxiety, and uncertainty.  Consequently, the nation has collectively had a glimpse into the reality of living with trauma exposure: unfettered anxiety, impaired concentration, declined productivity, the constant sense of uneasiness, and perhaps an emotional numbness and detachment from things once enjoyable. 

Fortunately, for many of us, this disruption and chaos seems to have clear start and endpoints, like bookends to the turmoil. For many Chicago youth, however, this distrust and skepticism about the safety of the world has long been an accepted part of life.  For these children, tragedy and loss aren’t newsworthy.  It is normalized and ultimately ignored.  These children and families have long deserved improved access to mental health services, given the high exposure to community and surrounding violence. As they brace themselves against the compounding effects of low income, unemployment, housing and food instability, and substance use—the impact of which remain unseen, unheard, and untreated for generations—these youth need support. 

Students within these communities face educational barriers.  This is not surprising given the cumulative impact of these stressors.  The neuroscience of trauma is undisputed: stressed brains cannot learn.  These students can have the most competent teachers with robust lesson plans; however, if their brains are not offered the opportunity to process and heal from these experiences, their ability to absorb the academic material is impaired.  Consequently, this impacts attendance, in-school behaviors, and overall achievement.  

Adopting a Comprehensive Framework of Care 

To combat the long-term and adverse effects of trauma, schools must begin to adopt a comprehensive framework that provides a safe, calm, and predictable place where students address, rather than exacerbate, their mental health needs.  Under this model:

-Educators and staff will be trained to recognize and understand the signs and impact of trauma.  

-Administrators will identify and reduce the risks of re-traumatization inherent in many traditional disciplinary practices by pivoting towards restorative, not punitive, interventions that validate students’ underlying emotional needs while also reinforcing personal accountability.  

-Academic instruction and social and emotional learning will co-exist in the classroom as teachers learn concrete and accessible strategies to address disruptive or contentious classroom behavior in a way that strengthens healthy decision-making and self-regulation skills. 

-Finally, intentional efforts will be made towards healthy relationship building amongst and between students and teachers. 

By extending across all departments, a trauma-informed framework allows staff to incorporate their training and knowledge of trauma-sensitive practices into their current roles to collaboratively provide the best trauma-informed, resiliency–focused care to its students. 

A school-wide framework and approach is necessary to normalize the idea of asking for and receiving support.  By employing a trauma-informed framework, the school will demonstrate to staff, students, parents, and the community that trauma and mental health are important.  In doing so, the school will take a necessary step towards de-stigmatizing the act of talking openly about mental health and the healing process.  There is no doubt that all school personnel want to provide the best educational experience and opportunities to their students; a trauma-informed, resiliency-focused framework will lead the effort to organize the school community so collectively all members are equipped with the knowledge, skills, supports, and resources necessary to teach and connect with students in healthy and therapeutic ways.  

Interrupting the Silent Suffering 

After several weeks of talking, I asked Elijah why he never asked for help.  Why didn’t he let someone know about the bus stop?  He looked at me and looked around the room, and simply said, “I thought I was good.  I thought it was something everyone can handle.”  When pressed a bit further, Elijah flatly said, “I thought it was normal that my family got shot.” 

I asked Elijah’s teachers if they knew why Elijah was missing class.  A few shrugged and attributed his absences to inherent laziness or teenage angst.  Some sensed there was something else going on but assumed he would bring it up if it were important.  Some were too busy to wonder at all.    

This June, Elijah shook hands with the principal and received his diploma.  Frankly, he barely made it.  His grades never recovered from the months he spent avoiding the bus stop.  In other words, Elijah’s grades never recovered from the time he spent struggling to independently manage the symptoms of trauma he didn’t know he had.  Sadly, Elijah’s success seems largely accidental.  He was referred to mental health services because there was a problem – he was missing class.  But how many of our children silently suffer?  Elijah took the next step in agreeing to open up to me, but for many, there is a stigma associated with being vulnerable.  In a building full of adults dedicated to Elijah’s academic success, when Elijah’s emotional wellness became a barrier, he was left to deal with these problems on his own.  

A school-wide trauma-informed framework would assist in deconstructing these barriers, so someone might have inquired if Elijah’s absences were a symptom of something deeper.  A trauma-informed framework would have equipped educators with the knowledge and skills necessary to navigate this situation.  And, perhaps, it would have reduced the number of days Elijah felt alone, afraid, lost, and hopeless as his weaved through cross-streets and crosswalks, his headphones drowning out the memories of the bus stop. 

Tatiana is a Licensed Professional Counselor and a law student at Loyola University Chicago School of Law.  She specializes in addressing the trauma-related mental health needs of youth and adolescents.  She wrote this blog post as part of Loyola’s Education Law Practicum.  See also this Trauma Toolkit that she co-authored with Tashiana Stafford, which was released by the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the Transforming School Discipline Collaborative.

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International Incidents: The New Title IX Regulations and Study Abroad, by Lauren Schneider

Posted on September 19, 2020 by Jennifer Babisak

On May 6, the Department of Education released the much-anticipated Title IX Regulations for Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Sex in Education Programs or Activities Receiving Federal Financial Assistance. The new regulations spell out the scope of schools’ obligation to respond to allegations of sexual violence that occurs within their programs or activities. They also appear to settle a controversial question that federal courts have previously split on: does Title IX apply abroad? 

According to the regulations, the answer is a clear and resounding “No.”

Photo of Lauren Schneider in Fall 2008 during her study abroad program in Argentina. Shown with her Argentine host mother, Ester Brun, at the Perito Moreno glacier in Patagonia, Argentina.

The regulations emphasize the law’s language that says, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, . . .  be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity. . .” In other words, Title IX’s protections stop at the border. But every year, thousands of college and university students study abroad. We know that students abroad are vulnerable to sexual assault. So how should schools prevent and respond to sexual harassment and assault that occurs on their programs abroad, if not under Title IX? 

Before the New Regulations: Courts Split on Title IX Abroad 

Very few cases previously addressed whether Title IX applies abroad. The federal district courts that have addressed this issue reached different conclusions. In one early case, King v. Bd. of Control of Eastern Michigan University, six students participating in the university’s study abroad program in South Africa alleged they experienced sexual harassment from two other program students and one program assistant. The professor leading the program allegedly failed to take any action to stop the harassment when the students informed him of the incidents. The harassment became so severe that the students left their program one week early. They sued their university under Title IX. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan found that Title IX did apply to schools’ programs and activities abroad. The court said, “study abroad programs are operations of the University, which are explicitly covered by Title IX and which necessarily require students to leave U.S. territory in order to pursue their education.” In the court’s view, the law’s primary objective to protect students outweighed the presumption against applying U.S. laws abroad.  

However, in a later case, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York found the opposite. In Phillips v. St. George’s University, a graduate student attending St. George’s University’s School of Veterinary Medicine in Grenada alleged that a mailroom employee sexually harassed and assaulted her. When the student told the school’s administrators about the incident, she claimed they did not take it seriously or tell the employee to stop. The student subsequently filed a lawsuit in U.S. court, alleging that the school’s apathetic response violated Title IX. Presumed jurisdiction was on the basis of SGU having an office in New York and the student using U.S. federal student loans to pay university tuition, though the court rejected these arguments. The court dismissed the student’s lawsuit, finding that Congress did not intend Title IX to apply outside the U.S. The court cited the law’s plain language and declared there was no evidence of legislative intent for the statute to apply abroad.

Ultimately, the new Title IX regulations agree with the Phillips court. If a case reached the Supreme Court that challenged the regulations’ interpretation of Title IX and its applicability outside the U.S., the Court could side with King and overturn the regulations. Unless and until this happens, the regulations control. 

If Title IX Does Not Apply, Do Schools Still Have a Duty to Prevent and Respond to Sexual Violence Abroad? 

The regulations agreed with the Phillips court’s reasoning and declared Title IX doesn’t apply abroad. But they also acknowledged the importance of international education programs and activities. Although Title IX may not apply abroad, schools still have a duty to their students abroad when they are in the school’s care. In a recent case, Jane Doe v. Rhode Island School of Design, a student sued her school for negligence and premises liability for housing during a program in Ireland after another student allegedly broke into her bedroom and raped her. The court found that the school had a duty to the student to provide her with safe housing abroad—the school controlled the housing in the program and required all students to live there. Thus, there may be other legal consequences outside of Title IX for schools that do not take proper care. 

How Should Schools Prevent and Respond to Sexual Violence Abroad? 

Regardless of the legal liability, schools also owe moral and ethical responsibilities to their students. Schools can and should work to prevent sexual violence abroad and respond supportively if it occurs, even though Title IX doesn’t apply. For starters, study abroad offices need to talk about the reality of sexual harassment and sexual assault abroad during their pre-departure meetings and on-site orientations. Education is the best preventative measure. Particularly if a location has specific known risks, schools and study abroad organizations have a duty to mitigate risks, to share information, and to empower their students to make informed choices about their study abroad participation. 

Second, schools can still provide supportive measures for students who report experiencing sexual violence abroad. In the new regulations, supportive measures include non-punitive, non-disciplinary individualized services designed to help the student continue in his or her educational program. These can include counseling, extension of deadlines, modification of schedules, changes in housing locations, increased security, etc. The new regulations allow supportive measures to extend to students abroad. So, schools can and should offer them to survivors abroad, though these measures might need to adapt to the local circumstances. 

Third, the regulations also make clear that schools can enact policies in their Student and Employee Codes of Conduct to respond to allegations of sexual violence that fall outside the scope of Title IX. Schools may choose to enact grievance procedures for allegations of sexual misconduct abroad that reproduce those mandated by Title IX for incidents within the U.S. Or, schools could create a separate process for incidents that occur abroad. Either way, schools should carefully consider how they will respond to allegations of sexual violence abroad. They should draft policies that consider the kinds of risks to which students may be exposed and imagine how the policies would play out in various scenarios abroad. 

Students can be proactive in holding schools accountable too. Before committing to a study abroad program, students should ask their schools and study abroad offices about their safety plans, whether they track data on sexual violence abroad, and how they respond when students abroad report experiencing sexual violence. If a school or study abroad program doesn’t have ready answers to these questions, students should keep asking until they find a program that does.  

As international educational programs grow and expand, and more students choose to pursue them, schools have a duty to take as much care in preventing and responding to sexual violence abroad as they do on their domestic campuses. Title IX’s protections may stop at the border, but a school’s duty toward its students does not. 

Lauren Schneider is a student at Loyola University Chicago School of Law and wrote this blog post as part of the Education Law Practicum.

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UNCONNECTED: Students Left Without Instruction During COVID-19, by Timothy Higus

Posted on September 5, 2020 by Jennifer Babisak

The public health crisis resulting from COVID-19 thrust virtually all schools, teachers, and students into a world that relied on remote access to education, and it became clear that a significant number of students were left unconnected.  

The Widening Homework Gap 

Some astonishing findings have been published over the last several years regarding the “digital divide” (American’s unequal access to technology) and the “homework gap” (the inability for students to do homework without technology). In 2017, as part of the Every Student Succeeds Act requirements, the National Center for Education Statistics found that students living at or below the poverty threshold and students who are American Indian, Black, Hispanic, or living in a rural area have significantly less home-access to technology.

Most people cited the expense of broadband as the primary barrier to access or that their family did not need or have an interest in access. Rural students reported difficulty getting access to fixed broadband service. In 2018, the Pew Research Center found that the majority of eighth-grade students rely on connected technology to complete their homework and that approximately seventeen percent of students said they were unable to complete their homework because of a lack of home internet access. The U.S. Senate’s Joint Economic Committee found that nearly 12 million students were living in homes without access to broadband in 2017.  

This problem worsened when in-person learning was suspended. Delivering instruction remotely to students without access to technology was one of, if not the most, challenging components of remote instruction for teachers and students. Although the homework gap existed before the school closures, the disparity became much worse during remote learning because of the increased reliance on web-based communication and assignments. Some school districts were not able to develop online lessons and instead sent home packets of paper learning materials or recordings of lectures on DVDs or flash drives. Even in districts where a substantial number of students were connected, many school leaders faced difficult equity issues around providing some students with synchronous, online instruction while other students were left to work through self-guided packets.  

State and Local Efforts 

Surprisingly, private Internet Service Providers (“ISP”) and telecom companies offered significant help while schools were closed. Many telecom companies provided mobile hotspots to students and schools at no or reduced cost to keep students connected anywhere they can get a phone signal. Private ISPs also helped keep students online by lowering or eliminating their costs of service for fixed broadband service. Unfortunately though, these special offers were often limited to “low-income” households where the family had no outstanding previous balance with the company. These conditions created an obstacle for many families seeking an equitable education for their children.  

Many school districts took it upon themselves to keep students connected. A number of schools distributed one-to-one devices so students had a device at home. Schools also found creative ways to mitigate the connectivity problem such as sending mobile hotspots on buses into the community or distributing mobile hotspots directly to students. Some even found a way to emit a Wi-Fi signal over TV whitespace. These solutions may have been sufficient for a short-term emergency but will likely not be sustainable over a long period. Because there is a reasonable likelihood that schools will be doing some sort of remote learning throughout the Fall and that the homework gap will exist after, as it did before the school closure, schools will need permanent solutions to the connectivity problems faced by many students. 

All fifty states have created some type of task force, commission, or authority to coordinate broadband expansion. While these committees are charged with identifying problems and creating solutions for broadband access state-wide, several states stand out as models for broadband expansion. Efforts that some states have already taken to improve infrastructure include appropriating grant money for broadband infrastructure, partnering with private industry to subsidize infrastructure in difficult service areas, and installing broadband conduit in new transportation projects. Some states have developed grant programs to increase public broadband networks in communities with low levels of broadband access. Others have developed hotspot lending programs with libraries and increased bandwidth and connection speeds for schools to allow more students to connect at once. Some municipalities and tribes have even created a public ISP that generally provides higher quality broadband access at lower prices. 

Federal Broadband Intervention 

Many education advocates are asking Congress and the Federal Communication Commission (“FCC”) to help solve the issue. The FCC is in charge of the E-Rate program which allocates money to schools and libraries for telecommunication connections. This program would be an ideal way to fund at-home internet connections for students, but the Chairman of the FCC argues that the law, as written, does not permit that use. It is estimated that the E-Rate program had the authority to allocate $1.5 billion dollars before its fiscal year ended in June but lacked the statutory authority to provide funds to expand off-campus connections. The funding was available, but the agency did not ask Congress for the additional authority to put the dollars to the highest and best use. The FCC had conducted a pilot program in 2011 and 2012 to determine if off-premises access should be eligible for the program, but the program did not produce any reported results. The Chairman has also said that he would instead support parallel legislation that is solely focused on distance-learning connectivity. 

The FCC does provide funding through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, which is set to spend over $20 billion over the next ten years to expand rural broadband access. This allocation will help, but the Fiber Broadband Association claims that a plan to get fiber-optic networks to 90 percent of U.S. households will cost an additional $70 billion. The FCC has also helped through the school closures by clarifying that schools and libraries could provide their Wi-Fi signals for the community although their facilities were closed. They have also secured promises from broadband providers not to terminate service for non-payment during the crisis. 

Some members of Congress are also working to expand broadband access through legislation. One Democratic bill in the House of Representatives would appropriate $4 billion to create an “Emergency Broadband Connectivity Fund” to subsidize internet access and increase aid for Wi-Fi hotspots. Another House bill focuses primarily on educational access and would create a fund of $2 billion for schools and libraries to buy Wi-Fi hotspots, routers, and internet-connected devices.  

Acknowledging the Issue 

Schools made their way through the last quarter of the academic year the best way they could. Some found creative ways to provide access for their students while others relied on antiquated methods of instruction like paper packets. Going forward, schools must continue to determine the limits of the students’ connections and find practical ways to resolve any deficiencies. This may mean that schools will need to work one-on-one with families to resolve a total lack of connection and coach teachers to develop lessons that reduce bandwidth use. While the federal government can certainly help, the responsibility ultimately falls on schools and states to provide a free, appropriate, public education. Such a valuable education obviously now includes remote connectivity. 

Timothy Higus is a student at Loyola University Chicago School of Law and wrote this blog post as part of the Education Law Practicum.

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Silently Struggling Students: Solving the Mental Health Crisis in Schools, by Sana Sami

Posted on September 5, 2020 by Jennifer Babisak

What is mental health? 

COVID-19 has already directly afflicted the lives of nearly 6 million people in the United States. The response to aid individuals afflicted with this illness has been emergent due to the threatening nature of COVID-19.  

But what if there was another illness that affected 5 million people in the US for their entire lives, though symptoms were not always apparent? Instead, they were almost undetectable in some cases. Well, it seems like we would all be just as scared.   

Unfortunately a condition like this does exist. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, it is estimated that one in five youth have a mental health condition or disorder, with half of mental health conditions developing by age 14.  

A mental health disorder is a condition that disrupts a person’s mood, thought or behavior, often for a long period of time.  

The growing crisis around student mental health, and the scarcity of available care, has long been a concern of many educators and health professionals. However, the previous responses to mental health in schools have been mostly reactive, and focusing on a crisis response rather than a comprehensive approach to helping students with their mental health needs. It is also important to recognize that untreated mental illness has a devastating impact on learning.  

Currently, only 16 percent of all children receive any mental health services. However, of those receiving care, 70 to 80 percent receive that care in a school setting. 

What is being done? 

According to a 2014 study by the Center for Health and Health Care in Schools, students who receive positive behavioral health interventions see improvements on a range of behaviors related to academic achievement, including but not limited to letter grades or test scores.  

Comprehensive programs generally provide substantive professional development for staff, including workshops and resources. These programs have social and emotional learning competencies integrated into the curriculum. Despite this evidence, comprehensive mental health programs are still only scattered across the country. Many resource-starved districts have cut or never staffed critical positions, namely school psychologists, weakening their school’s ability and capacity to properly address these challenges. 

How can educators help promote positive mental health in the classroom?        

In every school, there are people who could play a big role in identifying problems and helping students succeed. Teachers see students every day and could spot sudden changes. But teachers have almost no mental health training. Counselors can help but there just are not enough of them. On average, every counselor has nearly 500 students. School nurses are medical professionals; however, there is rarely more than one school nurse in one building. School psychologists have the most expertise to step in due to their specialized training; however, schools are not required to have one on staff. 

The goal moving forward needs to be that all these roles work together to create an environment that supports a student with a mental health disorder. Beginning with parents, everyone helps create a safe, caring environment. In this systematic approach, everyone watches for warning signs in a child such as major changes in mood, headaches, slipping grades, and missing class. When those warning signs pop up, specialist staff counselors, nurses, or school psychologists step in.  

Teachers and students should be provided with ways to recognize signs of developing mental health problems, and there should be opportunities around the awareness and management of mental health crises. Students themselves need to be empowered with information so that they will be able to get the help they need. Because children spend most of their day at school, it just makes sense to have mental health awareness and education become part of the curriculum. 

Experts recommend beginning as early as kindergarten, with a focus on age appropriate instructional practices in areas like reducing stigma and obtaining and maintaining good mental health. At the kindergarten level, this also includes social and emotional learning, which allows kindergarten students to identify their emotions through labeling activities, drawing or painting pictures, and reading books. Furthermore, mental health disorder training should address the relationship between mental health, substance abuse, and other negative coping behaviors, as well as the negative impact of stigma and cultural attitudes toward mental illness. 

How can we promote positive mental health in students? 

Several states have either approved or have legislation in the works related to mental health education. New York was the first state to enact a law requiring mental health education in public schools. The state legislature allocated $1 million in 2018, and the state budget included $500,000 in 2019 to create the School Mental Health Resource and Training Center to support school efforts to comply with the new law. 

A Virginia law requires mental health education in the 9th and 10th grades. A proposal for implementing the new law extends the mandate to include kindergarten through the 10th grade. The proposed standards are designed to be incorporated into existing standards for social and emotional health. They include age-appropriate instructional practices aimed at reducing stigma and teaching students how to obtain and maintain good mental health, understand mental health disorders, pick up on signs and symptoms of distress, and seek help. For example, at the 4th grade level, students will learn about healthy self-concepts, respecting differences, and how to understand and manage emotions related to loss, grief, and stress. 

Some legislation to aid the mental health crisis in schools is aimed at addressing concerns about additional workloads and teacher training. The American School Counselor Association recommends a student to counselor ratio of 250 to 1, and as of 2019, only three states (New Hampshire, North Dakota and Vermont) are aligned with that threshold. However, there has been progress in that regard; a new Texas law requires teacher preparation institutions to include mental health instruction in their certification programs, and a Nevada bill created a grant program for districts to contract with social workers or other mental health professionals. 

In Arizona, the State Board of Education recently approved an additional $20 million for schools to hire counselors, social workers, and police officers, and the Colorado School Counselor Corps has put $60 million into new hires and professional development since 2008. 

What more can be done? 

The efforts to aid the mental health crisis in schools in these particular states is a step in the right direction; however, there needs to be a standard set across the country when it comes to helping students with mental health. This means that there needs to be parallel legislation enacted in each state, coupled with a goal towards a more reasonable student to counselor ratio to ensure that students receive the proper mental health attention. 

That impact on well-being may be magnified by another effect of school closures: Schools are “the de facto mental health system for many children and adolescents,” providing mental health services to 57 percent of adolescents who need care, according to the authors of a recent study published in JAMA Pediatrics. School closures may be especially disruptive for children from lower-income families, who are disproportionately likely to receive mental health services exclusively from schools. 

Another JAMA study found a three-fold increase in adult depression during the pandemic, indicating a potential surge in mental health struggles for both students and teachers. Whether virtual or in-person, schools will be on the frontlines of this struggle: COVID-19 will have major repercussions for children’s and adolescents’ health and well-being. Timely action can help lessen the effects and improve long-term capacities for mental health services. 

Sana Sami is a student at Loyola University Chicago School of Law and wrote this blog post as part of the Education Law Practicum.

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Bathroom Blues: The State of Legal Protection for Transgender Students in Illinois and Chicago, by Jesse Tobin

Posted on August 4, 2020 by Jennifer Babisak

Using the bathroom that corresponds to your gender is something most people do every day without thinking twice. But what if instead of a mundane everyday occurrence, it was something you had to fight for? For transgender students, bathroom use is fraught with complication.

In May of 2016, under the Obama administration, the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education issued statements clarifying that Title IX protected the rights of transgender students to use the bathrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity.

However, the Trump administration rescinded these protections in February 2017, stating that the previous policy did not “contain extensive legal analysis or explain how the position is consistent with the express language of Title IX, nor did they undergo any formal public process. This interpretation has given rise to significant litigation regarding school restrooms and locker rooms.” The Departments of Justice and Education also released a letter stating that there “must be due regard for the primary role of states and local school districts in establishing educational policy.”

On June 15, 2020, the Supreme Court held in Bostock v. Clayton County that Title VII protections extend to gender identity and sexual orientation. Discrimination against a person based on their gender identity or sexual orientation will now be considered discrimination against that individual based on their sex, instead of discrimination against LGBTQI+ people as a group. The Court stated that its ruling only applies to Title VII, and sex-segregated bathrooms and locker rooms are not directly addressed by the decision. However, courts frequently rely on Title VII decisions to inform Title IX rulings, and schools should expect renewed questions grappling with bathroom and locker segregation rules under a Bostock framework. Courts that interpret gender identity as sex may find themselves clashing with the Department of Education’s position on the matter.

Chicago Suburban High School Policy Struggle

In the suburbs of Chicago, a massive legal battle regarding locker room use involving transgender students recently took place between a community group called Students and Parents for Privacy and Palatine Township High School District 211. The skirmish began in 2013, when a student known as “Student A” filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. She had been refused access to the girls’ locker room and was forced to use an isolated restroom as her changing area. The complaint contended that the District’s policy of having transgender students change in isolated and separate rooms violated Title IX of the US Education Amendment of 1972. The Office found the school district had violated Title IX and issued a ruling promising to work with them to end discriminatory policy and practice against transgender students in November of 2015.

However, in May of 2016, Students and Parents for Privacy filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Justice, and District 211. The plaintiffs asked the court to issue a preliminary injunction that would require the District to compel students to use bathrooms and locker rooms based on their assigned sex at birth. The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Illinois, and Mayer Brown LLP filed a motion to intervene on behalf of transgender Illinois high school students through the student’s parents and the Illinois Safe School Alliance. After briefs were filed and oral arguments were heard, the Magistrate Judge, Jeffery T. Gilbert, issued a report recommending denial of plaintiff’s motion. He stated that the plaintiffs had not shown they would suffer irreparable harm or that they lacked an adequate remedy under the law.

The four-year fight ended on November 14, 2019, when Palatine School District voted to give transgender students unrestricted access to the bathrooms and locker rooms of their choosing.

The language of the new policy states that students “shall be treated and supported in a manner consistent with their gender identity, which shall include students having access to restrooms and locker rooms that correspond to their gender identity.” The policy requires that students and parents formulate a plan with the school district to be implemented by January 1, 2020.

New Bathroom Blueprints at Loyola University School of Law

Transgender bathroom arguments can also be heard in the hallways of Loyola University Chicago School of Law. OUTLaw, Loyola’s LGBTQIA+ advocacy and support student organization, led the charge with support from the Student Bar Association. Loyola law graduates Rachel Johnson and Carly Helman were the main drivers of the efforts. Rachel and Carly, who both identify as non-binary, had successfully advocated for gender-neutral bathrooms at their undergraduate institution, Beloit College. During their 1L year at Loyola, they uncovered only one gender-neutral bathroom in the law school, far away from the law school floors. Hoping to push for more accessible gender-neutral bathrooms, Helman, Johnson, and the director of Loyola’s weekend JD program, Kirk Walter, encouraged Loyola to create a multi-stall, gender-inclusive restroom on the twelfth floor of the law school.

Despite support from the administration, the organizers were notified by the Facilities department that the gender-neutral bathroom would be in violation of Chicago Building Code 18-29-403.3. The Code states, “The required water closets, lavatories, and showers or bathtubs shall be distributed equally between genders based on the percentage of both genders anticipated in the occupant load. The occupant load shall be composed of 50 percent for both genders, unless statistical data approved by the building commissioner indicate a different distribution of both genders.” Since the multi-stall, gender-inclusive bathroom would replace the men’s room, it would upset the required balance.

The organizers didn’t back down in light of this challenge. A new plan was formulated: starting in Summer 2021, there will be multiple single-stall gender-neutral bathrooms on multiple floors to replace the original gender-neutral bathroom plan. Until then, Loyola will be posting signs encouraging students to use the bathroom that most closely aligns with their gender identity. Although this plan will possibly alleviate bathroom anxieties for many trans students, it “obviously has some issues for folks who are outside of the traditional gender binary,” says Helman.

Loyola law graduate Justin Sia initially hoped to amend the Chicago Building Code, but pivoted to a state-wide strategy when “we found out that the Chicago plumbing code is potentially preempted by Illinois plumbing law, which we were told sets the floor for all municipalities to follow. While proposing amendments to the Illinois law brings up new challenges, we are excited to advocate for a more inclusive Illinois, rather than just a more inclusive Chicago.”

Illinois passed a bill in 2019 entitled “The Equitable Restrooms Act” that requires all single-occupancy public bathrooms to be labeled as gender-neutral starting January 1, 2020. The bill specifically requires all “places of public accommodation” or “public buildings” to outfit their single-occupancy bathrooms with outward signs. The signs must be devoid of a gender indicator and mark it as a bathroom. The law passed with a 109-5 vote in the House and unanimously in the Senate.

Sia is currently pushing for an amendment to the Equitable Bathrooms Act that would allow public and private buildings across the state, including schools, to implement gender-inclusive, multi-stall restrooms. These gender-neutral restrooms, if implemented, must include stalls with solid locks and privacy strips that cover the cracks between stalls. The amendment would also allow for every individual toilet to be counted towards the quota of male or female ratio requirements, which would circumvent the Plumbing code’s current roadblock.

(Readers can contact Justin Sia at jsia@luc.edu to express support, ask questions, or provide suggestions regarding the proposed amendment.)

Jesse Tobin earned his JD at Loyola University Chicago School of Law.

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Re-Examining the Role of School Resource Officers, by Matt Chapman

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Jennifer Babisak

As protests challenging systemic racism and police brutality continue into their third month, the relationship between police departments and public schools is finally being questioned. While school boards in cities like Seattle and Oakland have voted to suspend or eliminate school policing programs, Chicago’s Mayor and elected school board has been more reluctant to heed the growing number of voices calling to do the same. Movements for removing School Resource Officers (SROs) are not new, but as America begins to reconsider the role of the police in our communities, SROs have become an important focal point.

Earlier this year, a video went viral of a 6-year-old girl in handcuffs being escorted from

her school in Florida. Traumatic incidents like Kaia Rolle’s are being brought to light as new discussions emerge around the function SROs and police officers play in our schools.

Following the tragic 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, the number of armed personnel in schools has increased at a high rate, as states like Florida passed legislation requiring armed security in schools. Even before this type of legislation was passed, nearly 71% of high schools nationwide had at least one armed police officer assigned to their school building. And now, as this number continues to grow, more evidence is being presented that these policies actually have a negative impact on students.

SROs and Student Outcomes

A study released in 2018 explored the relationship between increased police presence and academic outcomes for districts across Texas. Using data from 1999-2008, the study combines demographic and discipline records of over 2.5 million students in Texas with district applications for COPS (Community Oriented Policing Services) in Schools grants, a federally funded program. This study found that higher levels of police in schools are associated with increased rates of discipline, especially among students of color and decreases in both graduation and college enrollment rates. Specifically, federal funding for SROs led to a 6% increase in disciplinary rates for middle school students, a 2.5% decrease in high school graduation rates, and a decrease of 4% in college enrollment rates.

These effects are an unfortunate and unintended consequence of policies that, at least on their face, are enacted to help keep students safe from outside threats and improve community-police relationships. The COPS program examined in the 2018 study above identifies a “triad” of roles for SROs: law enforcement, counseling, and teaching.

Despite the goal of this three-pronged role, SROs report that the majority of their time in schools is focused on law enforcement; however they rarely address serious crime. Instead, adolescent conduct that would normally be dealt with through traditional school discipline policies is being handled by the police, criminalizing the behaviors. Conduct like “throwing a baby carrot” has been used as grounds to charge a student with assault and battery.  This criminalization is not an accident. An ACLU report shows how the training manual for the federal COPS program encourages the criminalization of student behavior.

For example, the training manual provides a hypothetical scenario involving a student found with cigarettes and a pocketknife. The manual suggests that despite there being no grounds to arrest the student, the SRO looked for a way to charge the student with some other offense. The SRO in this example settles on a ticket for possession of cigarettes and a charge of disorderly conduct on the grounds the other students’ awareness of the pocketknife caused a disruption. Thus, a situation that could have resulted in, at worst, an out-of-school suspension, has formally enrolled the student in the criminal justice system.

A New Beginning for SROs and CPS?

Chicago has had its own share of concerning incidents like those described in the SRO training manual. So many, in fact, that the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) conducted a review of the relationship between the Chicago Police Department (CPD) and the Chicago Public Schools (CPS). The 2018 review found that, among other things, CPD did not have policies or procedures regarding SRO training, SRO roles and responsibilities, or even an up-to-date roster of SROs and the schools to which they were assigned. In June 2019, OIG was still unsatisfied with the progress CPD was making regarding their SRO program, as they had failed to implement many of the recommendations from the 2018 review.

Although there are likely to be more concerning events in the future, there is some reason to be hopeful. In January 2020, CPS and CPD released a Memorandum of Understanding, outlining the role and expectation of the relationship of CPD SROs and CPS. In a time when the Chicago Teacher’s Union garnered support across the city as they went on strike to fight for greater mental health services in CPS, it is no surprise that the $33 million agreement to entrench the role of SROs would be met with some criticism.

The MOU achieves some notable improvements to the SRO program. Notably, SROs will no longer be able to intervene in school discipline issues, but they will be allowed to make arrests if a crime has been committed. However, the practice of criminalizing student behavior will make the line between school discipline and criminal activity difficult to define and may provide SROs with a broad range of discretion.

Additionally, SROs retain “full rights to enforce law and order” while on school grounds. In an environment where student conduct has routinely been criminalized, this language does little to curtail the ability of SROs to arrest students for relatively minor behaviors.

Finally, under the new MOU, CPS is shelling out $33 million dollars during 2019-20

Photo by Kat Yukawa on Unsplash

to cover the cost of the SROs. The money spent to keep police officers in more than 70 CPS schools is, according to a joint statement, to ensure “the safety and security of all students.” However, there is little evidence to show that the presence of the officers will keep the students safe, improve the learning environment, or make them less likely to end up involved in the criminal justice system.

Despite the voices of thousands of students, parents, and community members calling to terminate the contract between CPS and CPD, Mayor Lori Lightfoot has been hesitant to make large-scale changes. Mayor Lightfoot and CPS CEO Janice Jackson have dodged action by leaving it up to Local School Counsels (LSCs) to decide if SROs will be present in their schools.

In June, the Board of Education voted 4-3 to maintain the $33 million SRO contract. One important question brought up by many commenters at the July meeting was whether LSCs who chose to remove officers would be entitled to the funds allocated for the SRO program at their school. LSCs have been meeting to vote and the Board plans to reconsider the issue in August, but whether or not SROs will be removed from all campuses and funds reallocated remains to be seen.

Matt Chapman is a 2021 J.D./M.Ed. candidate at Loyola University Chicago. Drawing on his experiences in a wide variety of educational settings, his work focuses on Education Law and Policy.

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The New MOU between CPD and CPS: A Step in the Right Direction?, by Andy Froelich

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Jennifer Babisak

Families send their children to Chicago Public Schools (CPS) so they can graduate with a diploma and be prepared for success, but some students are leaving with more than they bargained for: a place in Chicago’s gang database. The Chicago Police Department (CPD) has a system in place, known as the Gang Database, that allows police officers to track and find out if a person has ever been identified as being part of a particular gang.

In April 2019, WBEZ wrote about a mother, Carolina, who suspected that her son, Nico, was wrongly added to Chicago’s gang database by the school resource officer (SRO) stationed in his high school. Nico’s only interaction with the SRO occurred in his sophomore year when he showed up to school late. During his senior year, CPD arrested Nico for aggravated battery with a firearm for allegedly shooting a member of the Latin Kings gang.

After the arrest, the family discovered from the police report that CPD identified Nico as a member of the Two-Six gang, a thought that was laughable to the family because Nico, who lived in an area dominated by Latin Kings, would never have survived in his neighborhood as a Two-Six gang member. But Nico went to high school in a Two-Six neighborhood, and the family suspects the SRO entered Nico into the gang database as a Two-Six member.

Scrutiny of Chicago SRO Practices

The lack of accountability of the Chicago SRO program and CPD’s gang database leaves many more students across the city vulnerable to police misconduct, particularly when these two systems are intertwined. In the United States today, between 14,000 and 20,000 police officers walk the halls of public schools, and they make an estimated 70,000 arrests each year nationwide. Alarmingly, between 2012 and 2016, SROs assigned to Chicago schools amassed $2,030,652 in misconduct settlements for their harmful conduct on and off school grounds.

Stories of SRO misconduct have brought attention to the lack of accountability and regulation in Chicago’s SRO program, but stories like Nico’s, although widespread, have not garnered the same attention. The more than 200 police officers working in CPS schools, until recently, had not been required to have any formalized or specialized training. Nor did CPD and CPS have any formalized agreement that defined the roles and responsibilities of police officers working in schools.

Chicago’s gang database has also received much scrutiny and has been a point of contention throughout the community due to its rampant inaccuracies, lack of oversight, and racist outcomes. Additionally, over 500 agencies have access to the database, and CPD currently has no restrictions on how the information is used and no way for a person to remove their name from the list.

Recently, CPD announced they would be revamping the gang database to develop stricter regulations on how names can be added to the database, and implement an appeals process that would allow citizens to remove their names from the list.

Despite the overhaul, critics believe that the gang database remains a harmful tool for discriminatory policing that has no proven impact on reducing crime.

The New Agreement between CPS and CPD

In December 2019, after much scrutiny and pressure from the community and the Office of the Inspector General, CPS and CPD finalized a $33 million agreement that created a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that established some ground rules for SROs working in CPS schools. The new agreement made clear that SROs should not be involved in day-to-day school discipline but will still have a visible presence in the schools and will be allowed to make arrests if they believe a crime has been committed.

The MOU also requires SROs to have three years of experience and undergo training that will teach officers about building relationships with kids; de-escalation; implicit bias; and working with students with disabilities, LGBTQ+ youth, homeless students, and immigrants. Additionally, the MOU creates a vetting and reporting system that will give school officials a say regarding what officer will be stationed at the school and a way to file complaints to CPD about their SRO.

Although SROs had access to computer terminals and the CPD CLEAR system (the CPD investigative tool) prior to the new agreement, the MOU guarantees all SROs personal and secured computer terminals with access to the private CPD network.

The MOU Fails to Address Concerns that SROs Collect Information for the Gang Database

If you accept the unfounded premise that police officers have to be in our public schools to ensure safety, then this new MOU, by removing SROs from school discipline and including training and reporting systems, would seem like a step in the right direction. But in reality, any effort that continues to give police officers a place and role in schools is a step in the wrong direction.

The mere presence of police officers in schools puts these officers in immediate contact with populations already susceptible to entering the school-to-prison pipeline. Schools with an SRO have five times more school-based arrests than schools without SROs, and overall, black students make up 33% of school arrests despite only accounting for 16% of the overall school population.

This agreement does not go far enough to protect these vulnerable students. Although many people support SRO programs because they believe SROs make schools safer, especially in light of recent school shootings, the research on this is mixed and may even suggest that SRO programs do more harm than good.

Particularly troubling are these unanswered questions:

Are SROs collecting information on students based on what they see and hear in the schools?

And if so, what are they doing with that information?

Community organizations and advocates around Chicago, including Nico’s family, have alleged that SROs stationed throughout CPS schools are using what they see and hear in the school hallways to collect information and to identify students as gang members. This is especially significant now that the new agreement guarantees SROs secured office space with CPD-installed computer terminals connected to the CPD network. There is nothing in the new agreement that would prevent SROs from collecting data on students or maintaining that data in their CPD-installed computer terminals.

Notably, Vanesa del Valle, an attorney with the MacArthur Justice Center, believes it is possible that SROs are using things they learn at their schools to enter students into the gang database. It is equally possible that SROs are also using their terminals to put student information into the CLEAR database and to search CPD’s controversial gang database for students at their schools.

In a review of Chicago’s gang database, the City of Chicago Officer of Inspector General found that CPS ran over 87,000 gang database inquiries over the past 10 years, roughly 2% of the total database inquiries in that time period. Of all the external agencies with access to the gang database, CPS ranked #3, behind the Cook County Sheriff and the Illinois Department of Corrections. CPS did not give a clear reason as to why so many gang database inquiries were run from their system, but it is possible that these inquiries are being conducted by SROs from their computer terminals.

And as with Nico’s story above, there is little accountability and transparency in Chicago’s gang database program that leaves students with no way of knowing if they are in the gang database or how they got on it. Yet, having your name end up on the database can lead to serious implications, such as preventing people from getting jobs, licenses, housing, and immigration relief, and receiving harsher outcomes in criminal court.

Despite a New Agreement, Many Questions Remain

These are only a sliver of the unanswered questions this new agreement raises. Time will tell if the provisions in the MOU will achieve their intended purposes of school safety, accountability, and curbing the school-to-prison pipeline. For example: Will the new reporting system have any actual impact given that complaints are made directly to CPD? Can transparency and accountability be achieved when CPS and CPD redacted all the names of officers and schools involved in the SRO program? And will participating schools actually feel empowered to report and/or remove an SRO from their school under the provisions of the new MOU?

With renewed public pressure after the killing of George Floyd, the CPS Board of Education held a vote on June 24, 2020 on whether to terminate their $33 million SRO contract with CPD. In a narrow 4-3 vote, the CPS Board of Education voted to maintain the current contract and keep police in CPS schools. However, CPS has given the seventy-plus Local School Councils the opportunity to vote on whether to retain the police in their individual schools. The Local School Councils have until August 15 to vote. As of July 28, 2020, the Benito Juarez Community Academy in Pilsen, the Roberto Clemente Community Academy in Humboldt Park, and Northside College Prep councils have voted to remove the SROs from their school communities.

The bottom line for Local School Councils going into these important votes: although SROs under the new agreement will not be involved in routine school discipline, their very presence will continue to have a harmful effect on students throughout the city, particularly for students of color who attend schools in communities that are already over-policed.

Andy Froelich is a law student at Loyola University Chicago and wrote this blog post as part of the Education Law Practicum.

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Windows and Mirrors: Recruitment and Retention of Black Male Teachers, by Ashli Giles-Perkins

Posted on July 27, 2020 by Jennifer Babisak

In the midst of a potential national teacher shortage exacerbated by COVID-19, there is another kind of crisis flying under the radar. Put plainly, the teaching force lacks meaningful diversity.

In a society that continually grows more diverse, with student populations reflecting this diversity, the teaching force is 80% white. Black teachers make up just 7% of the teaching force, and this is down from 9% just a decade ago. Surveys have estimated that white women account for as much as 85% of the teaching force.  

Former Chicago Public Schools (CPS) Chief Education Officer Latanya McDade summarized the problems succinctly in an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times:

“In the United States, we have a teacher workforce that is 80 percent white for a student population that in the five big districts is 80 to 90 percent students of color. That’s a problem.”

While this blog mainly outlines obstacles, solutions are within our grasp and will be discussed at the end.  

Importance of Black Teachers for Black Students 

Research by the National Collaborative on Diversity in the Teaching Force presents statistical evidence showing teachers of color have been directly linked to closing the achievement gap. White teachers have lower expectations for academic success for black students than do black teachers: white teachers are 30% less likely to predict a black student will complete a four-year college degree. When black students are taught by white teachers, their chances of being placed in a gifted program is nearly cut in half, even if they have the same test scores as their white peers. When black students are taught by black teachers, this gap disappears. Another measurable difference between white teachers and black teachers is how they perceive and respond to behavior. When looking at the exact same student, black teachers are much less likely to see behavioral problems in black students than a white teacher.   

A separate study found strong long-term impacts of assigning a black male student in grades 3-5 to a black teacher. In fact, such teacher-student match ups reduce the probability of that student dropping out (approximately by 29%) and increase the chance that student will attend a four-year college. 

Positive impacts such as these are the mitigating factors to the school-to-prison pipeline. Young black males, who make up a grossly disproportionate percentage of those who are incarcerated, are more likely to have better life outcomes when they see an older version of themselves teaching the class. Female students and students of other races can also benefit.

But all the black teachers are leaving…

“Putting a black man in the front of a classroom does a lot to shift the narrative about how young children perceive black men in this country.” 

–William Hayes, The Fellowship.  

We must pay specific attention to the retention of black male teachers, who represent a mere 2% of all teachers nationwide.  Data from the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) highlights the uncharacteristically high turnover among minority teachers. Scholar Richard Ingersoll compared the SASS survey conducted in 1988-89, which found white teachers left the teaching force at a 13% rate and black teachers at 14%. Data from the 2012-13 survey shows white teacher departures are substantially similar at 15%, yet the percentage of black teachers leaving has skyrocketed to almost 25%.  

This phenomenon has a historical context. In 1954, there were 82,000 black teachers in American public schools and within a decade of Brown v. Board of Education, that workforce was cut in half as all-black schools were shut down. Our schools and teachers have yet to recover.  

Race/Ethnicity of Teaching Staff in Public Schools (2011–12)

Ingersoll, R., May, H., & Collins, G. (2017). Minority teacher recruitment, employment, and retention: 1987 to 2013. Palo Alto, CA: Learning Policy Institute.

There are many reasons why black teachers leave the profession, as indicated by the graphs from the Minority Teacher Recruitment Report. The first chart demonstrates where minority teachers teach. Overwhelmingly, minority teachers find themselves in high poverty and high minority schools. More often than not, low-income students live in low-income neighborhoods, meaning there are fewer resources for teachers. A lack of supports consequently makes the job even more challenging, which is often attributed to teaching fatigue. However, data from the Learning Policy Institute paints a slightly different picture.

Of Those Minority Public School Teachers Reporting Dissatisfaction, Percent Reporting Particular Reasons for Their Turnover (2012–13)

Ingersoll, R., May, H., & Collins, G. (2017). Minority teacher recruitment, employment, and retention: 1987 to 2013. Palo Alto, CA: Learning Policy Institute.

This second chart is a visual representation of the reasons minority public school teachers who reported being dissatisfied left the teaching field. Overwhelmingly, the number one reason minority teachers left the field was due to dissatisfaction (50%) and the least contributing factor to teacher turnover is retirement (17%), followed by school staffing action (25%), to pursue another job (30%), and family or personal reasons (46%) (note that teachers surveyed could select more than one answer so the results do not add up to 100%).  

More than Just a Shortage 

Often, there is just one black male teacher on a teaching staff; therefore, it is not surprising that black male teachers report few opportunities for mentorship, professional development, and career advancement.  Another contributing factor to the black male teacher shortage is the burden placed on them to serve as their schools’ disciplinarians, particularly for younger versions of themselves. Black high school history teachers are called into meetings to talk with students who wouldn’t do their work, or these teachers may have misbehaving students sent into their classes without warning. These actions add stress to an already stressful job.

These teachers report being the unofficial diversity experts of their schools, who may be tapped for promotions related to disciplining students, but not to teach advanced courses. It’s called the “invisible tax” and it leads to burnout and frustration. This is only further compounded by isolation, little support, and lack of an outlet to discuss these burdens. Such a void has not gone unnoticed, and programs across the country seek to fill the gaps.  

When Jovan Shaw and Jason Terrell met as Teach For America roommates, they formed an instant bond. They stayed in touch even after their assignments and in 2014, they co-founded Profound Gentlemen. Profound Gentleman is a non-profit seeking to build a community of male educators of color, create space to build relationships, and reshape the narrative for black students at their schools. 

The Fellowship is a non-profit based out of Philadelphia with a goal to double the number of black male teachers in the city by 2025. The founders seek to do this by recruiting more black men into the teaching field and retaining those already in the field.  

The Fellowship is not the only organization of black male teachers of its kind–in fact, there is another closer to home.  

Men of Color in Education was an initiative from the mayor’s office in collaboration with City Colleges of Chicago focused on supporting men of color going into the education field. Former Mayor Rahm Emanuel described MOCE as, “the beginning of a ripple effect for men of color to continue teaching and mentoring their younger peers for generations to come.” MOCE is a three-semester program, led by educators of colors, who work with students interested in careers in education, allowing them to earn college-level credentials. It is effectively a pipeline increasing the number of black males in education, and it is accompanied by a system of mentors, support that too many black teachers do not even have.  

The Way Forward 

What the research clearly shows is that it is vital to hire and retain and support black males in the teaching profession. We are doing children, especially black children, a disservice if they cannot look to the front of the classroom and see someone that looks like them at least once in their K-12 education. We are doing our black male teachers a disservice by placing additional burdens on them while failing to provide professional and social supports. These factors contribute to achievement gaps and the school-to-prison pipeline.  

To address these gaps, we should take action in the following two ways:

First, because black teachers only make up 2% of the national teaching profession, the emphasis must initially be on recruiting more into the profession.

Second, once recruited, we must support our black male teachers. To do so, we must alleviate rather than increase teaching and service burdens, promote them, and provide work-related spaces to discuss and address their concerns.  

Principal Chris Goins of Butler College Prep created ‘Intro to Urban Education,’ a class focused on introducing students of color to the teaching profession. The students follow educational policy through a social justice lens, and Goins hopes to eventually offer scholarships for students seeking to go into the field, and even summer job opportunities. He leaves us with the following message:  

“We’re a window because they can see the possibilities of going to college and majoring in education.  And we’re mirrors because we look like them and they can relate and speak to us.  Research confirms that kids need those affirmations in the classroom.”  

The research is clear. The opportunities to support these initiatives are endless. We can say we want more black teachers in our classrooms. And we can work to make it happen.

Ashli Giles-Perkins is a 2020 graduate of Loyola University Chicago School of Law and wrote this blog post as part of the Education Law Practicum.  

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COVID-19 and its Impact on the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), by Carrie Park

Posted on July 23, 2020 by Jennifer Babisak

Nationwide School Closures  

With the exponential rise of COVID-19 positive cases throughout the United States, schools have found themselves in unmarked, formidable territory. One-by-one, states implemented preventative measures via temporary school closures in efforts to “flatten the curve.” As of mid-May, 48 states, four United States territories, and the District of Columbia closed schools for the remainder of the academic year. 

Remote Learning: Beneficial for All? 

In response to states’ actions, school districts provided remote learning for students. While e-learning platforms prove useful for a majority of students, remote learning remains a challenge for students with special needs, and potentially runs contrary to federal disability laws, like the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

The IDEA is a federal law that affords eligible children with disabilities access to free appropriate public education (FAPE). In efforts to ensure the IDEA is enforced during shelter-in-place orders, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos published a supplemental fact sheet on accessibility and distance learning options for children with disabilities. The U.S. Department of Education emphasized that ensuring compliance with the IDEA “should not prevent any school from offering education programs through distance instruction.”

The Department further stated that Individualized Education Program (IEP) teams–who design a student’s unique special education program–“must make an individualized determination whether and to what extent compensatory services may be needed when schools resume normal operations.”   

‘Limited Flexibility’  

Educational compensatory services are given to students with disabilities when an educational agency fails to provide FAPE and IEP goals are missed. Examples of compensatory services include academic tutoring and occupational therapy. Once re-open, schools will be responsible for providing such services to eligible students. Uncertainty clouding both when and how schools will “resume normal operations” may complicate administering compensatory services.  

On March 27, President Trump signed the federal coronavirus stimulus relief package into law to alleviate public health and economic impacts from COVID-19. Among other relief, the package gave Secretary DeVos waiver authority from federal mandates to grant schools with “limited flexibility.”  

Such “flexibility” could lead to lax state and district measures for ensuring proper accommodations are made for students with disabilities. These measures could leave students with disabilities little opportunity to advocate for their education and ultimately, themselves.  

Are IDEA Waivers Necessary? 

“NO ADDITIONAL waivers are necessary under either the IDEA or the Rehabilitation Act.”  

In an April 3 letter submitted to Secretary DeVos, over 70 members of the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities (CCD) Education Taskforce and allies affirmed their conviction against implementing IDEA waivers. The advocates believed because the IDEA already offers flexibility for solutions to remote learning, civil rights protections for students with disabilities should not be sacrificed.  

The disability advocates pushed for the Department of Education to enforce four principles that Congress must uphold:   

(1) Local educational agencies must continue providing FAPE 

(2) Parents must be involved in IEP decisions 

(3) Parents retain due process rights 

(4) Federal education fund use must adhere to the IDEA and other civil rights laws 

Practical Applications in Lieu of IDEA Waivers   

How then can the Department of Education practically enforce these principles? The letter suggested that FAPE under current circumstances may indicate virtual one-on-one instruction. It may also mean providing students with materials containing language-specific instructions for families. 

Shelter-in-place orders should also not hinder parent participation. CCD stated that remote communication between parents and teachers had already been occurring prior to shelter-in-place orders. Therefore, virtual communication is practical and should be even more encouraged today. CCD further emphasized parents’ vital role in the decision-making process of their child’s education. 

Parents’ due process rights can remain intact through frequent collaboration and communication between parents and schools. CCD emphasized the importance of such joint efforts to proactively address service provision and accessibility issues. 

In place of issuing waivers, CCD recommended Congress provide sufficient funding to school districts in order to support special education during the global pandemic.  

‘No Reason’ to Waive Core Tenets of the IDEA  

In the April 27 report to Congress, Secretary DeVos stated the Department of Education was “not requesting waiver authority for any of the core tenets of the IDEA.” The Secretary found “no reason that a student’s access to FAPE cannot continue online, through distance education or other alternative strategies.” Some limited waivers to sections of the IDEA were recommended, including deadline extension for assessing children transitioning from early intervention to preschool programs.  

While many disability advocates and civil rights groups were pleased by Secretary DeVos’ recommendations, others were not. 

Chicago Teachers Union Sharply Responds 

On May 19, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) filed a complaint for injunctive relief against Secretary DeVos, the Department of Education, and the Chicago Board of Education. CTU contended the defendants’ handling of special education during the pandemic was inadequate. In response to Secretary DeVos’ recommendations, the Chicago Board of Education issued a directive that would require a “whole scale redrafting” of roughly 60,000 IEP and Section 504 plans. CTU asserted the directive would place “an impossible burden to carry out in the roughly six weeks left in the school year.” 

On June 19, a federal judge denied CTU’s request for a preliminary injunction. While denying injunctive relief, the court commended teachers for their work in trying circumstances: “Along with the parents and guardians of their young charges, these public servants are the boots on the ground, so to speak, in the effort to ensure that our more vulnerable students continue to receive the education to which they are entitled. They too deserve the recognition—and gratitude—of society.” 

The Question Remains 

As plans for returning to in-person schooling or continuing remote instruction for the fall semester are being made across the country, the question remains: what decision will be in the best interests of children with disabilities and their education amidst a global pandemic?

Carrie Park is a law student at Loyola University Chicago and wrote this blog post as part of the Education Law Practicum.

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