Leading With Facts, Not Fear

If Illinois residents want #ReturnToPlay, #ReturntoLearn needs to take centerstage

On Wednesday, Illinois Governor Pritzker continued his #BenchTheKids tour.

He spouted more vague anecdotes about sweat and saliva for why athletes can’t play football, and trotted out another Trojan Horse doctor as cover.

Said Dr. Michael Lin, an infectious disease physician at Rush.

Contact team sports such as football and hockey can become super spreading events very easily. Just one youth athlete showing up with a virus can start a chain reaction of spread that can quickly threaten an entire team. While the virus continues to circulate widely in our communities. There’s no practical way to prevent outbreaks from happening in sports such as football with all the contact that’s inherent in the sport. This is not just theoretical. We’ve seen COVID-19 outbreaks in college and professional sports teams that have much more prevention resources at their disposal.

With all due respect, Dr. Lin, what you said IS theoretical and just more of the same—fear-based, anecdote-driven narratives when the conversation is about football and the coronavirus. Dr. Lin cited no studies to support his claim of ‘outbreaks’.

I have no doubt of Dr. Lin’s credentials and that he is a good doctor. He was vetted by the Governor and did just as he was asked to do. If Patch Adams was standing next to the Governor Wednesday, he’d have said the same thing, only while wearing a clown’s red nose and a sheepish grin, silently whispering, ‘this is some f-ed up shit.’

I’ve written it before, and I’ll write it again—football is kaput in 2020.

How can we continue to move the conversation forward? How can we get athletes back on the playing fields, indoor courts and mats in the late fall, winter and spring?

Pritzker said something Wednesday that provides insight as a measurement for how he is approaching those questions:

My number one priority here is to make sure that we could allow in school learning….we want people to get back in the classroom. That’s the high priority

On a clear and warm Wednesday evening, at Gallery Park in Glenview, #ReturnToLearn was top of mind for hundreds of citizens.

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The Glenbrook South senior, Colin Morse, took the microphone and said this about remote learning:

There is a glaring truth that is facing every student that has sat through a Zoom lesson. Online learning can never replicate the classroom. For the past month, we have sat looking at a small computer screen for hours a day, only to be assigned hours more for homework. We cannot go back to this kind of learning.

Another GBS student, Marlo Pulliam, said this about the first month of her senior year:

I’m going to be senior at Glenbrook South High School. I’m sorry I am a senior at Glenbrook South, it just doesn’t feel like that because technically we haven’t had a first day yet.

Morse and Pulliam are students in the Glenbrook 225 school system. It encompasses Glenbrook North and Glenbrook South High Schools. Combined enrollment in both schools is a little over 5,000, with GBS the largest, with an enrollment just north of 3,000.

Like almost all public schools in Chicagoland, Glenbrook District 225 started the 2020-21 school year with remote learning. Tuesday night, its school board voted to institute a hybrid model of education, with the combined remote/in person schooling to start in October.

It’s a start, said the students who spoke at the rally. But it’s not enough.

“Our education should be live and not limited to a computer screen, sitting alone in our rooms for our last year and being denied the opportunity to succeed. We deserve more,” Pulliam said.

“This is the first year where freshman are not able to make new friends and explore new passions. We have an opportunity to allow students back in school while allowing those who feel at risk to stay at home,” Morse said. “We do have practical and safe means of re-opening, any more delay or regression is simply ignoring the reality.”

Morse also mentioned not settling for a ‘fluctuating hybrid’ model, an idea many school districts have used in negotiations. Such tactics basically amount to stalling mechanisms to further kick the can down the road in avoidance of full time, in-person learning.

The ‘reality’ Morse referred to in his speech are facts. Whether we are talking about #LetUsPlay or #LetUsLearn (as was used at the Glenview rally), we are at a point with the virus where the facts are out there, readily available.

How to weaponize the fight against fear is clear—beat ‘em with facts, facts, facts.

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When the shutdowns began in March, Grant Koster had to recalibrate his business.

Athletico is one of the nation’s largest physical therapy organizations. As Vice President of Clinical Operations he is tasked with leading the company’s operational response at the outset of the coronavirus pandemic. He quickly seized on three emerging crisis inflection points:

“One was a health care crisis. The second was a fear crisis and the third was an economic crisis. I went through all those phases as well but we needed to understand what we were dealing with and how to deal with it,” Koster said.

He determined temperature checks, mask wearing and travel advisories would become the new normal. Protocols would be created based off data from the Centers for Disease Control and the Illinois Department of Public Health.

With no history of dealing with a viral pandemic, and the fluid nature of its containment, collaboration would be essential. So Koster talked to everyone; hospitals, the Governor’s office, even business competitors. Front and center in every conversation—how to protect the most vulnerable and ‘essential’ workers such as first responders and health care professionals.

“We had to find a way,” Koster said.

Almost seven months later, Koster and his team at Athletico (with 550 locations throughout the country) have worked through the worst of the three crises he identified in March. In a masked environment, protocols followed 24/7, with patients and workers in close proximity, Koster said there has not been one documented case of the virus being transmitted from provider to patient. He talks to employees and tracks the data daily.

He now believes there is another industry that should be labeled ‘essential’ and demands the same dogged approach.

“Make no mistake, education is an essential service. We have to find a way,” Koster. “Fear is not a strategy. It’s a feeling.”

Koster raised a question stakeholders in school districts all over Chicagoland have been asking since the end of the 2019-20 school year.

When education leaders ignored surveys from parents where the majority desired some type of in-person learning. When virtual meetings were held hostage by a handful of stories of someone who claimed a loved one had fallen ill from the coronavirus. When teachers unions gave the OK to their members to strike although that right had not been collectively bargained.

When local businesses opened their doors and found a way to do so safely.

“All of our businesses in our community are figuring it out. Why can’t our education administrators and teachers…I’m not villainizing them…I just want them to step up to the challenge of being an essential health care worker,” Koster said. “We have protocols if someone calls in and and says they are sick. We have disciplined cleaning, we have disciplined entry and exits.

“We can do the same thing in our schools.”

The tone of Koster (as well as the other speakers) was not combative towards teachers and administrators. Everyone thanked teachers for the job they were doing and how difficult remote learning is on them.

It’s the leadership. Same as #ReturnToPlay.

Those in charge at the highest levels—the Illinois High School Association, district Boards of Educations and superintendents—are failing to act in the best interests of their constituents.

“When things are shut down and things are quarantined, people begin to dictate,” former Chicago Public Schools Paul Vallas said, who spoke at the rally. “We have people arbitrarily making decisions without input. When you have 80-90 percent of parents in a school district who want their kids back in school and the school board and superintendent decide to shut the school down, where is the input?

“You have to make your voices heard. You have to take back your schools.”

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There are 852 districts in Illinois. Over 3,870 schools with almost two million students.

If one was to take a drive down I-294, or I-55, or I-94, or Rt. 45, get off on an exit with a school nearby, they might hear the familiar shrieks and shouts of children outside at recess. If they drive down the road to another school, they might see an empty parking lot. If they drive farther, come up to another school, they may see a full lot. But if they drive by the same school on a Wednesday rather than a Tuesday, the lot may be half as full.

“What alarms me is the variance,” Koster said. “There is a best practice and we need to roll it out across Illinois.”

There is no variance in the desires of parents of Glenbrook schools—92 percent want in-person learning, according to a survey.

They are reading the same data anyone can access. Data willfully being ignored by education leaders.

In June, The Illinois State Board of Education published the latest volume in its ongoing transition guide for the 2020-21 school year.

The 63-page document covers everything from social distance, capacity limits to symptoms and screenings. In the document, it states the importance of mask wearing while indoors. But here’s what it also states:

Face coverings do not need to be worn outside if social distance is maintained.

The document also has this answer to a popular question about whether all individuals in a school building are required to maintain social distancing at all times:

Social distance is to be observed as much as possible. Desks do not need to be six feet apart. However it is recommended that excess furniture is removed and allow as much space as possible.

This document is available right now on the ISBE website. How do these facts compare with what education leaders are saying about re-opening plans?

“We can put pressure on administrators around this document,” Koster said.

And the six feet distance? It’s not an across-the-board mandate.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics school re-entry guide:

Evidence suggests that spacing as close as 3 feet may approach the benefits of 6 feet of space, particularly if students are wearing face coverings and are asymptomatic

Common sense says kids need to be around other kids. Their social and emotional well being is critical. This bit of data clearly says that it is safe for them to be closer to one another than what is commonly believed.

All of the facts add up and helps get kids back in the classroom.

“The effects of the lack of socialization will be studied for years. Now is the time to hold our leaders accountable for education, health and well being of our students,” Koster said.

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Just as in Chicago Sept. 19, all the speakers in Glenview Wednesday night were tremendous.

Dr. Dana Russo, an OB/GYN, spoke at length about mental health.

Randi Gillespie spoke about her special needs daughter, Maddy, and the challenges of other special needs children in the Year Of The Virus.

Jackson Carsello, an Glenbrook North football senior, spoke of the missed opportunities for younger athletes whom will not playing this fall. Carsello is a Northwestern commit but admitted he likely would not have received as many scholarship offers if he were a 2022 graduate.

Sean Finkle and Luke Henry, both senior athletes, spoke eloquently about not being with their teammates and not understanding why.

But now, at this moment, I believe #ReturnToPlay is tied to #ReturnToLearn.

If parents want basketball, wrestling, football, soccer, volleyball, baseball or any other sport to come back, there must be strong messaging on the importance of children being in the classroom. Hybrid is a fine start but insistence on full time must not be a request, but a directive.

Those speaking in Glenview Wednesday, as well as other rallies across Chicagoland, are leading the way in shifting the focus of the fight.

“I believe teachers have a responsibility to honor this profession,” Koster said. “To the many children and taxpayers who count on them with the radical responsibility of educating our children as essential workers in our community.”

“Teachers are essential workers and the teacher’s union need to understand that and act accordingly. The closing of schools defies logic. It’s a shame and there has been an absence of leadership,” Vallas said. “It’s eight months with children held hostage in not a secure academic environment. I’m not picking on the teachers, I’m picking on the leadership.

“So, the fundamental question is, what are you going to do about it?”