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It didn\u2019t take long for Edwin Panduro, a sophomore at Air Force Academy High School on the South Side, to completely tune out his teachers while taking courses remotely during the pandemic last year.<\/p>\n
Home alone with two younger brothers, he kept his own laptop on mute with the camera off, often paying more attention to their schoolwork than his own. By midyear, Panduro stopped logging on. By spring, he knew his odds of graduating on time or even making it through high school were shrinking. <\/p>\n
This fall, Panduro looked for a school where he could start fresh. He landed at the South campus of Ombudsman, a national operator of alternative high schools, tucked in a strip mall in the Chicago Lawn neighborhood. <\/p>\n
Long seen as second-chance campuses for students often derailed by homelessness, teen parenthood, trauma, or involvement in the criminal justice system, Chicago\u2019s network of alternative schools attracted some teens such as Panduro during the pandemic. But overall, the number of new arrivals on alternative campuses fell \u2014 in part because of a quiet district push to rein in the number of students transferring out of its traditional schools. <\/p>\n
That push is part of a broader effort to rethink the district\u2019s tenuous relationship with its alternative schools \u2014 a partnership with the University of Chicago\u2019s Education Lab that has tried to strike a balance between strengthening alternative campuses and right-sizing them after years of rapid growth. <\/p>\n
The district piloted new academic and mental health interventions on these campuses, some of which have come under fire for offering pared-down curriculums and sparse support services. But at the same time, it took steps to keep more struggling students in neighborhood campuses, which coupled with the pandemic dealt a major blow to some alternative schools\u2019 enrollment. Transfers to what the district calls options schools plummeted to about 1,200 students last year, less than a third of their pre-pandemic rate. <\/p>\n
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