In post-COVID world, education officials hope to bridge local digital divide

Published by the Institute for Public Service Reporting in the Daily Memphian.

Latarsha Jenkins was one exam away from getting her G.E.D. when Shelby County schools shut down in mid-March.

Days later, the pandemic also caused the 35-year-old single mother of four to be laid off from her job as a home health aide. At that point, Jenkins said she had to “pick and choose” which bills were essential: “WiFi wasn’t in the pick.”

So for the past two months, her kids — two in elementary, one in middle and one in high school — have been taking turns using Jenkins’ phone to access assignments. That worked for one of her daughters, whose teachers used apps her phone could access, but not always for the other children.

It would’ve helped if just one of her kids had an internet-enabled computer device provided through school.

By August they all might.

Last week, Shelby County Schools (SCS) presented the County Commission with a digital plan that would provide every student and teacher with a laptop and training on how to use it. (Even those who don’t need a device would get one, in order to ensure a secure network). The more than 100,000 devices would cost roughly $53 million, half of which would come from federal coronavirus stimulus funds.

A similar digital plan, though with a five-year rollout, was rejected last year. But now it’s urgent, argues SCS Superintendent Joris Ray.

“It’s not a want. It’s a need,’’ he said. “It’s a right.”

Ray hopes to reopen schools in the fall, but with a second wave of the coronavirus expected not long after, he says some form of remote learning must be formalized. So the district has less than three months to narrow the so-called “digital divide,” in a way that’s quicker than bringing broadband service to parts of the county that have none.

According to SCS Chief of Staff Patrice Thomas, the laptops being considered run on LTE technology, like a cell phone, and have embedded Wi-Fi. However, if the final option does not, SCS would provide a “hotspot” device — mobile WiFi that can be plugged into a USB port, for example — to any students and teachers who need it.

Indeed, for summer school — which will take place online this year — the district says it will supply students with one of the 35,000 devices it currently has (and a hotspot, if necessary), some of which were loaned to graduating seniors.

Roughly 20 percent of American teens don’t have a computer or internet at home. Meanwhile, in some Memphis neighborhoods more than 60 percent of households have no Internet access.

The actual number for SCS students who have internet access isn’t clear because little more than half of the families surveyed about their tech access have responded.

“Digital access is a huge divider right now, in terms of who’s learning, who’s not learning. Who’s connected to the world, who’s not connected to the world,” said Gini Pupo-Walker, Tennessee director of The Education Trust, a research nonprofit that advocates for students of color and lower-income status.

The digital divide isn’t new, but it was easier to ignore before the entire education system moved online overnight.

Pupo-Walker said she’s fielded many calls since then, from public school parents wondering why students were encouraged, but not required, to participate in online classes, or why they weren’t being graded.

She had to explain that it was an attempt to mitigate education inequities. Already there are many “disconnected kids falling behind,” said Pupo-Walker. “Are we going to penalize those (whose) mom has one phone between the four or five of them?”

Or kids in foster care, or are homeless, or have disabilities?

Latarsha Jenkins said when schools shut down, she was in the process of getting an Individualized Education Plan, or IEP, for her 8-year-old, who has epilepsy and had just transferred to Keystone Elementary. But because the IEP wasn’t finalized, she said she received no support from any Special Ed teachers.

Even more frustrating, though, was suddenly having to teach her kids subjects she herself wasn’t familiar with.

 “I can’t teach them the way the school teaches them. I can’t just look at one or two sentences and explain what (they’re) supposed to do because I don’t know,’’ Jenkins said.

Meanwhile, there are kids that may not have gotten any instruction since March, and no one knows, because no one has heard from them.

Marie Cushing had 23 second-graders in her class, and there are three she just wasn’t able to reach. She said she called and texted every number on file, even from different phones, and did “everything but show up at their door,” which is dangerous in the pandemic. Particularly worrisome is that these are families she’d been in touch during the school year.

Cushing is ending a tenure at Cornerstone Prep Denver in Frayser, and nearly all of the school’s students live at or below the poverty level. It’s a charter school that doesn’t provide all students with a computer device, but teachers were required to hold two hours of online sessions every day. Some saw their students regularly.

“You hear about some kids doing Zoom music lessons in addition to their Zoom curriculum, and it just it hurts your heart,” she said.

Not one of her kids showed up for her sessions.

She texted and talked with some families; others sent photos of completed work assigned through YouTube lessons she created. But Cushing didn’t push any kids to show up online or do homework because she couldn’t be sure their basic needs — food, water, shelter — were being met. “My role is not to be the police,” she said, “(but) a supportive partner.”

With nearly half of Shelby County kids living in poverty, support from teachers is vital. And school itself can be a safe haven, said County School Board Commissioner Stephanie Love, who represents part of Raleigh, Frayser and north Shelby County.

“School was the place where you knew you were going to get two meals a day,” Love said.  “You knew that if it was cold outside, it would be warm in the building. If it was hot outside, it would be cool in the building. We have students who wanted to come to school because maybe there was dysfunction going on in the household.”

To lose that safe haven while a parent may be losing their job, or a relative may be sick or dying from coronavirus, isn’t conducive to doing homework. But Loves hopes the shared sense of uncertainty will open some people’s eyes.

 “The challenge that the entire world has right now,” said Love, “our black communities have been having these challenges since conception. The inadequate health care, the food deserts, the internet deserts.”

She thinks the latter will be partially addressed by the district’s digital plan, a hybrid of off- and online learning that would include a unified software platform. (Currently, teachers who use online apps do so at their own discretion.)

But Love still has a host of questions for district officials: About sustainable funding for laptop upkeep; turnaround times for students who work at different speeds; how grades will be calculated; how the district can ensure parents will be there to help children get online. 

Love is also “really concerned about the children who won’t be able to log on due to some type of domestic situation or living arrangement that may cause them to refuse to do any work. Or people feeling like a teacher asking them to join a Zoom or Microsoft team meeting is an (invasion) of privacy.”

Then there’s virtual instruction itself, says the head of the Memphis-Shelby County Education Association, a teachers union. Keith Williams would like to see SCS develop a truly interactive platform, because he says currently students can’t really ask questions, and that’s the very basis of teaching.  

“You’re not really interacting with students as you could,” he said. “So when you don’t do that I don’t think you really support their learning and understand their misunderstandings.”

He fears that one-sided contact, coupled with the loss of social development that takes place in schools, will lead to even larger academic gaps among the district’s most fragile kids.

The COVID slide

In between school years, many kids lose academic ground. It’s called the summer slide, and it’s measured in reading and math skills. Like the digital divide, it disproportionately affects minorities and poor students, who may receive less academic stimulus at home.

According to research from the Northwest Evaluation Association, the greatest learning losses are expected in math and among elementary school students. Unlike middle or high schoolers, younger students typically need the help of an adult to navigate digital learning and they may not have gotten it because their parents or guardians were at work, or were home but busy with their own work, or just weren’t computer savvy.

How these learning gaps will be measured remains to be seen. Local and state education task forces created to address the issue have intimated there will be assessment tests, but the details haven’t been worked out, according to spokespersons for SCS and the Tennessee Department of Education.

Meanwhile, all the educators interviewed for this article expressed concerns that the assessments will be “punitive.” That, like standardized testing, they’ll reinforce the socioeconomic divides at the core of education inequities.

Plus, Cushing added, while the COVID slide is real, it may not be as bad as predicted because the spring quarter isn’t necessarily used for introducing new material.

She said most people don’t even realize that, for most grade levels, “this time of the year, after spring break, is just test prep. It’s cramming to do well on TNReady and MAP and i-Ready assessments. So the level of learning that’s happening is not as rigorous.”

Educators also pointed out that no assessment tests take into account Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). Those are traumas that disrupt childhood development, like poverty — or a pandemic.

So, really, more mental health support will be needed to quantify the effects of this crisis, to help children process what’s happened to them, before they can begin to learn again, said Pupo-Walker of The Education Trust. Her biggest concern is that there will be less money than ever to meet that demand.

SCS has proposed cutting more than $11 million from its budget — as well as an unspecified number of jobs. Pupo-Walker also expects the legislature to reduce district budgets when it reconvenes in June, given the enormity of the economic crisis.

Meanwhile, the expensive problems keep piling up.

A safe learning environment

That includes how to create a safe physical environment until there’s a vaccine for the coronavirus, said Pupo-Walker.

“If you’re going to have kids spaced out, that means less kids in a classroom, (which) means more teachers. Now, do you go (to school) every other day? Half the school goes one day, half the school goes the other day? All the meals are in the classroom. There’s no sporting events, group events, assemblies. And then, of course, there’s the whole cost of keeping buildings much more clean than they are now.”

With the end of school, SCS administrators have a little more breathing room to work on overhauling the system even if Pupo-Walker acknowledged that’s virtually impossible in the midst of a crisis. On the other hand, she said, “If we aren’t able to be really creative and innovate, it’ll just reinforce the division that we’re already beginning to see.”

A division that laptops and disinfectants alone won’t be able to bridge.