5 issues to consider as the academic year begins in the pandemic

The only thing clear about the state of public education as another academic year begins amid the coronavirus pandemic is there is no clarity.

High school football games are on hold in California and North Carolina. But kickoffs are still scheduled this fall in roughly 30 states.

San Diego, Los Angeles and Chicago are among 20 of the nation’s 25 largest school districts that will open online only. But school districts in Georgia, Florida and elsewhere are reopening their classrooms.

The Kentucky governor wants school districts to delay in-school instruction for several weeks. But the Florida governor threatened to withhold millions from the school district that includes Tampa if it delayed opening schools by more than a week.

With roughly half of the nation’s students expected to head back to classrooms and the other half attending online classes, the pandemic makes it a school year like no other. The stakes are high; pictures from the crowded hallways of a suburban Atlanta-area high school went viral, at least 35 people tested positive for COVID-19 and the school was closed for cleaning.

The added pressures on Black and Hispanic families, and low-income families, are particularly intense as they balance educating their children and protecting their health with fewer options than more affluent white families.

Here are five issues to keep in mind as the academic year starts with no clear picture of how it will unfold:

1. At least 97,000 children tested positive for the coronavirus the last two weeks of July, according to a report from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association. Yet President Donald Trump asserted earlier this month that children are “almost immune from the disease.” PolitiFact rated that claim false. Children account for about 9% of COVID-19 cases, and that covers a period when schools were closed and millions of students stayed home.
2. Black and Hispanic children, like adults, are much more likely to become seriously ill from COVID-19 than white children. A study of 14 states released this month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found Hispanic kids were eight times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 than white kids, and Black kids were five times more likely to be hospitalized than white kids. The same study found that those Black and Hispanic children were more likely to have underlying health conditions than white children.
3. Staying home and taking online classes is often more difficult for low-income children who lack easy access to computers or reliable Internet connections. The Los Angeles Times found that California school districts “serving communities with the lowest incomes — all with a majority of Latino students — had to confront a wide digital divide when campuses closed in mid-March and struggled for weeks, some more than a month, just to begin online learning.’’ The state still needs more than a million computers and hot spots of students.
4. In many communities, “pods’’ are a new shorthand for parents determined to ensure their children don’t fall behind if their school buildings remain closed. Several parents typically get together and pool their resources to hire a teacher or other educator to provide instruction beyond the online classes provided by the school district. But that can be expensive, and low-income families often do not have the financial resources to join a pod and get more help for their kids. Some educators fear the trend will further exacerbate the achievement gap between white and minority students.
5. A final thought: School districts from California to North Carolina that are starting the year with online-only classes are requiring their teachers to teach those classes from their empty classrooms. How can teachers who are parents afford to hire someone to stay with their children who are taking virtual classes from home while they are teaching virtual classes from school?

Tim Nickens recently retired as editor of editorials for the Tampa Bay Times and can be reached at tim.nickens@gmail.com. This is part of a series funded by a grant from the Rita Allen Foundation to report and present stories about the disproportionate impact of the virus on people of color, Americans living in poverty and other vulnerable groups.