Chalk Beat Chicago | “Three Chicago teens, one pandemic year: How COVID-19 widened education gaps for boys of color”

As the promise of spring hung over Chicago, three teenage boys tussled with insomnia, sifting through the fallout of a pandemic year’s interlocking crises.

In Little Village on the West Side, senior Leonel Gonzalez often couldn’t sleep, beset by stubborn what ifs. What if next fall, one of the panic attacks that dogged him during the COVID era creeps up on him on a college campus? What if he didn’t pick the right school? What if he didn’t graduate and go to college at all?

Several miles away one morning before dawn, Derrick Magee and his stepsister, Anna, griped about virtual high school, which Derrick had tuned out weeks ago. Anna pleaded with him not to give up on a trying junior year at Austin College & Career Academy — and with it, on his entire high school career.

And farther north in the Belmont Cragin neighborhood, Nathaniel Martinez would stare at the ceiling and make plans. The sophomore had joined a new push to remove cops from city schools, at a time Chicago was reeling from the police killing of 13-year-old Adam Toledo. But school had receded in Nathaniel’s mind, leaving his grade report card in shambles.

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