Illinois’ more than two million public and private school students will be staying home after Gov. J.B. Pritzker took the extraordinary step of ordering the closure of the state’s schools in an effort to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
The decision, making Illinois the eighth state to do so, comes after days of steadfast resistance from Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot to close Chicago Public Schools, the nation’s third largest public school district, serving more than 350,000 students. Unlike previous press conferences this week, Lightfoot was not at Friday afternoon’s announcement by Pritzker at the Thompson Center in downtown Chicago.
The schools will be closed starting Tuesday and continuing until March 30, Pritzker said.
“We will close all public schools,” Pritzker said.
“To be clear, I understand the gravity of this action, and what it means for every community in our state,” Pritzker said. “This is the right thing to do, to protect our students and their teachers, school workers and parents.”
Pritzker said the decision will help protect more than just students, but also the wider community.
“It will have a massive effect on bending this curve, and that means lives saved,” Pritzker said. “This is a critical part of our larger social distancing efforts. … We have teachers, parents and the larger population to consider.”
The moves follows other states and cities — including Ohio, Maryland, Michigan, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Seattle, San Diego and San Francisco — that announced widespread school closures this week.
Locally, the Archdiocese of Chicago also announced Friday morning that all Catholic schools in Cook and Lake counties would close indefinitely. Winnetka, Oak Park, Evanston and many other districts also announced closures.
Leading up to Friday’s announcement, Lightfoot and other officials expressed concerns over providing meals and other support services to CPS families, the vast majority of whom are low income. Others raised questions over how services could be provided to the district’s 50,000 special ed students.
Pritzker said the state will help determine how best to distribute meals to families around the state.
The Chicago Teachers Union had called for the closure earlier Friday.
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Chicago parents shocked
Parents at Harrison Park in Pilsen were stunned by the news the the governor had canceled all schools in the state through the end of the month.
”We were just watching the news last night and [Mayor Lightfoot] said they were all going to remain open,” said Quintella Dennis, a mother with kids in first, third and sixth grades at CPS. “It’s definitely going to impact us. It’s going to be rough.”
Quintella Dennis, who is enrolled in a nursing program at Governor State University, said she was waiting to hear what the impact would be on her studies. But even if classes were held online, she said, she would now have three children at home to take care of.
Both Dennis and her husband have relatives with health issues and they would not want to put them at risk by asking them to watch their children, they said.
The decision is a double-whammy to Maria Morales, of Gage Park, who has a daughter in seventh grade at a CPS school and another in pre-kindergarten classes. She was laid off from her job working with a cleaning crew at McCormick Place last week.
Still, she supported closing schools, though, as whe worries about older family members, as well as her children getting sick. And if she fell ill herself, that would be a huge problem.
”Who would take care of them?” she wondered.
Ashton Jones, a father of a kindergartener in Brighton Park, said the family had been prepared for this to happen — but they probably haven’t prepared enough.
”We’ve been trying to get ready, but this is something we didn’t want to happen,” he said. “I guess we’ll just have to home-school.”
