Daily COVID-19 Update: Case Counts, All In Illinois Campaign, A Word from the Teacher, Department of Corrections and IDES Updates.
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Governor Pritzker provided an update on work to build out and open additional hospital facilities and announced a fourth location will be added to the list of places being opened to expand capacity across the State. Sites to be opened include McCormick Place, Sherman Hospital in Elgin, Metro South in Blue Island and now Westlake Hospital in Melrose Park. Construction is underway at McCormick Place with the first 500 beds ready this week. Construction is set to begin immediately on the other sites and the goal is to have them ready by mid-April. An announcement of an additional alternative care facility in Central Illinois is forthcoming.
The administration has also launched the
All in Illinois campaign
to unite Illinoisans during these unprecedented times. This platform is used to reinforce the stay at home order, share updates on COVID-19 as well as encourage residents while they are in quarantine. Visit the website
here
to learn more.
COVID-19 Count as of today
:
If you have questions related to COVID-19 you can contact the
Illinois Department of Public Health
:
Hotline
: 800-889-3931
Email
: dph.sick@illinois.gov
City of Chicago's Department of Public Health
:
Hotline
: 312-746-4835
Email
: coronavirus@chicago.gov
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Just as I asked my doctor and friend Anthony Vacarro to share his experience last week, we’re continuing with some guest thoughts today from Jessica Caskey, a teacher from Bell School and parent to 2 young kids on her perspective as well as some thoughts for parents navigating remote learning for the first time.
Dear Parent/Guardians/Caretaker/Families,
Any teacher will tell you, the first thing we think about as we start each day is how your families are faring with their physical and mental health. We worry about parents who are working on the front lines, and those who cannot stay home: nurses, doctors, medical professionals, nonprofit essential workers, grocery workers, gas station attendants, custodians, mail carriers, and we could go on. We are always thinking about your health and safety first. It keeps us up at night and up with a contemplative cup of coffee early in the morning. Education is important right now, but the impact of the virus supersedes all. It is a helpful perspective.
Now, you might be wondering, “Am I doing this right? Am I doing enough? Am I screwing this up? Should I be doing more with my child?” The answers to those questions are simple: Absolutely. Without a doubt. But, you are most certainly not screwing up. And you should do what feels right to you. Remember, no one has ever experienced this before, and what little research there is about distance/remote learning is not conclusive and really only focuses on post-secondary education. We don’t have enough research to know about how to tackle this, but we can take in careful recommendations. Teachers are listening. We are listening to our district, we are listening to our state, and we are listening to our leaders. We are making careful decisions, we are considering all types of learners, and we are making mistakes along the way. Some research
does
show that we do learn best by making mistakes (but, don’t worry, your child will be just fine!)
What can you do? You can do what you’re already doing and we can tell you’re doing the best you can. Listen to your child, give them choices, give them breaks, and know when they need to walk away from a task for a bit. As many teachers are working with their own children in tow, we can assure you that you cannot do it all. Nobody is perfect.
Give yourself some grace as a parent during this really stressful time. Teachers everywhere can guarantee you that we are with you even though we are not together.
From,
Teachers in our new classroom
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Illinois Department of Corrections
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This week has brought truly gut wrenching news out of one of our facilities, Stateville Prison. Stateville houses some of the longest serving inmates in our system and so faces possibly the biggest challenge with regard to addressing inmates at high risk from the virus. At this time, it appears to have the highest number of cases in the system, but that’s difficult to truly measure without widespread access to testing. We know from watching the experiences in other states and countries that every facility will eventually grapple with the rapid spread of the virus through the system.
The Department has set up a hotline for family members to get updates on their loved ones. The phone is staffed Monday - Friday from 8:30am to 5:00pm: 217-558-2200, extension 7700.
Illinois Department of Public Health Director, Dr. Ezike gave some hopeful news at today’s briefing, reporting that 3 of the hospitalized inmates had recovered sufficiently to be released from the hospital, presumably back to the facility but that wasn’t clear. In yesterday’s report, Dr. Ezike reported that 127 tests had been conducted at Stateville and with many still pending, the tests that had come back were running at about 45% positive.
Both the Governor and the Director spoke of the ongoing work to identify inmates eligible for early release, but didn’t provide details on what factors are being considered or a timeline, other than to make clear that they are processing and releasing folks at a steady rate. They added that it’s critical to ensure that anyone who is released has somewhere safe to go and that it’s equally important to ensure that the inmates still in the system are assured of appropriate care and the ability to safely create quarantine spaces within our facilities.
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Department of Employment Security:
Unemployment Insurance Application process, Independent/Gig Workers Update
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The Governor and senior leadership continue to provide ongoing updates on the intake system at IDES, acknowledging the incredible stress on the system in terms of sheer volume of claims to be processed. They report significant improvement in successful filings as the rebuild of the online system gets fine tuned and additional staff are trained on the phone intake system. The recent changes to the system as the result of the most recent federal relief bill have begun to come online with the 13 week extension and $600 increase components fully operational now and ongoing work on the new system to allow independent workers to access benefits. More on that next.
There continue to be challenges with the volume of cases and we encourage individuals applying to use the staggered schedule for applying as well as trying to apply at non-peak times. Our website has a lot more information, including the most recent FAQ pages from the department to help you determine your best approach.
Finally, the recently passed federal relief bill included a provision creating a path for non-traditional employees to access benefits. This is intended to create an option for 1099 employees, gig economy workers and independent contractors to access income supports in spite of not participating in the unemployment insurance system that is the foundation of the existing process. Because this is a brand new class of benefits, it’s simply not feasible to overlay this category into the existing application system and so a new system needs to be built for these workers. On today’s budget briefing we were informed that the work on this platform is expected to take about a month to complete, but once workers are able to apply, their claim will be backdated to the date their unemployment began, not the date they were able to apply. Continue to check the newsletter and website for updates as they become available and we’ll be sure to make an announcement when the platform goes live.
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Sincerely,
Kelly Cassidy
State Representative, 14th District
Office of State Representative Kelly Cassidy
5533 N Broadway
Chicago IL 60640
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773-784-2002(phone)
773-784-2060(fax)
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