CHICAGO — 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-19 era crept 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 fatal police shooting of 13-year-old Adam Toledo. But school had receded in Nathaniel’s mind, leaving his report card in shambles.
In Chicago and across the country, there is growing evidence that this year has hit Black and Latino boys — young men like Derrick, Nathaniel and Leonel — harder than other students. Amid rising gun…
