THE
PROBLEM
Currently,
the U.S. education debate is stuck in an either/or trap —
either we open schools for face-to-face instruction, or we
pursue only online teaching and learning. People from both camps say their
thinking is informed by a commitment to equity and social justice. Those who
think schools must open argue that Black, Indigenous, Latinx, low-income and
disabled students are at severe risk in terms of academic achievement, access
to food, access to supervision, and access to services if schools do not open
face-to-face. Those who think it is medically unsafe to open schools argue that
Black, Indigenous, Latinx, low-income and disabled students and families are
those most likely to contract and die from Covid-19 should there be an
outbreak. In the past few weeks, this national debate has come to a head as the
Trump administration and some districts have demanded that schools open, while
many educators, their unions, and other school districts have pushed back.
Who
are you?
I
am a Black woman, a researcher and educator with a doctoral degree and MSW, and
a mother of school-aged children — one who has a disability — trying to balance
work with no schooling or childcare relief since March 11, 2020. I have written
two books about race and schools, Those Kids, Our Schools: Race and Reform in an American High
School and Race
Dialogues: A Facilitator’s Guide to Tackling the the Elephant in the Classroom.
For the past decade I have worked as a social justice educator and consultant
in schools across Michigan. My work has largely focused on issues of racial and
economic justice for Black, Indigenous and other students of color as well as low-income
students, LGBTQIA+ students, and students with disabilities.
What
do you know about the consequences of not opening schools?
My
professional role in education means that I am very concerned about the
consequences of not holding school in person for the students and families who
are already most marginalized. I know there is a real risk of increasing
achievement and opportunity gaps. I know that many of our most marginalized
students — those who are housing insecure, food insecure, or living in situations
of abuse or neglect — depend on schools for food, shelter, and social services.
I know that parents and families of many children may not be able to keep the
jobs that feed them if there is no in-person school option to provide
childcare. I know that not all families have access to reliable internet or
computers. I know that some LGBTQIA+ students only find respite and safe space
at school. And I know that students with disabilities depend on schools to
provide them with all kinds of supports we cannot replicate online. Going
months (or an entire school year) without access to the learning, lunches, and
love schools provide may have devastating consequences for the communities that
are already most vulnerable. I also know that long before the pandemic, the
most marginalized students were unlikely to attain the kinds of academic and
economic success we wish, or have positive school experiences, because our
schools and our country were already failing them in ways too numerous to list.
What
do you know about the risks of Covid-19?
I
am also a bit nerdy when it comes to research and data and have been rather
obsessively consuming the news and scientific studies on Covid-19. I know that
Covid-19 is a real and existential crisis to human life. I know that it is a
stealthy virus that people can carry and spread without ever having symptoms
themselves. I know that researchers are only just coming to understand what
exactly Covid-19 is — perhaps more a blood vessel disease than a respiratory
one; a virus transmitted by droplets and aerosols; a virus that may be
contracted through the eyes, not just the mouth or nose; a disease that kills
some and may permanently disable others; a disease that has created a whole
class of “long-haulers” who have been sick for months with no end in sight; a
disease that may attack the brain and result in strokes for those who were
otherwise symptom free; a disease that manifests in scary, life-threatening
symptoms in some children; a disease for which immunity may not last long. I
know that we still do not understand the long-term consequences of Covid-19
exposure, but it’s looking bad.
I
know that the very students and families we are most concerned with when it
comes to the risks of keeping schools closed are also those
most at risk of contracting Covid-19. I know that the parents and families of
students of color and low-income students are more likely to work in jobs in
which they are being exposed to Covid-19. I know that if they get Covid-19 they
may not be able to keep the jobs they need to feed their families (just as they
may not be able to keep them if their kids do not go to school). I know these
same families are less likely to have adequate health insurance or healthcare
should they get sick. I know that if they make it to the hospital, they are
likely to get worse care than their white and middle-class counterparts and are
much more likely to die. I know that unlike other countries where schools have
opened, U.S. Covid-19 rates are on the rise and are unlikely to recede because
of the deep incompetence of our government which has continued to fail to
adequately and accurately test, contact trace, mandate masks or consistently do
any of the things that would curb the spread. And I know that a vaccine will
not be widely available by the time schools are scheduled to start.
What
do you know about the struggle of parenting while working?
As
a parent of three young children trying to work from home like many
middle-class Americans, I know that it is virtually impossible to do so without
childcare. I know that to the extent I have been able to work at all it is only
because I have a spouse and because we are both working reduced schedules that
still include evenings and weekends and a lot of stress. I know that I have
recently led groups of educators through zoom trainings while holding a naked
3-year-old and a crying 5-year-old. I know that this is probably not
sustainable.
What
do you know about the mental health consequences of these decisions?
As
a social worker who understands that mental health IS health, I know that many
children’s social development and mental health may be at real risk if they do
not go to school for a semester or year. I also know that the death or serious
illness of a parent, grandparent, sibling or close friend will be traumatic for
students and educators — especially if their loved ones are sickened by a virus
they brought home from school and a pandemic keeps them from mourning
collectively. The post-pandemic world will emerge from the shadows of mass death,
sickness and a crumbling economy, and I know that almost nothing we have
discussed as a society is adequately grappling with the reality of trauma
people will be dealing with, whatever we decide to do about schooling.
What
do you know about the impact of these decisions on teachers?
And
finally, as an educator, I know the challenge of trying to balance commitment
to your job and love for the students and families you serve with commitment to
your own family, your own children, and your own health. I know you cannot plan
amazing, engaging, enriching, rigorous lessons if you are trying to create
three or four different versions — the online version, the in-person version,
and the hybrid version. I know teachers cannot teach children online at the
same time as they are teaching children in front of them or at the same time as
they are supporting their own children who are learning online. I know you
cannot do your job well if you are scared you are going to die. I know that if
we try to force teachers to work in unsafe conditions, many of them simply will
not come back to implement our plans.
What
has been left unsaid by those on either side of this debate?
What
is left unsaid is that there is a good chance Betsy DeVos and her posse will
use this moment to try and privatize education across the nation. They will
pursue this immoral mission to destroy public education regardless of what we
do in the Fall.
What
is also left unsaid is that we will suffer in both versions. Online schooling
isn’t that great at supporting academics or mental health, while in-person
schooling in which masks must be worn, touching is banned, desks are in rows,
small group work isn’t possible, students stay in the same seat and classroom
all day long, students can get in trouble for failing to keep masks on or
playing tag is also not going to be great for students’ academic progress or
mental health. The choice isn’t online schooling or schooling as it was
pre-pandemic. The choice is between online schooling and a shell of the version
we had. We have no actual evidence that in-person school during Covid-19 will
work any better than the online schooling some have decided was a
failure. There is no good solution — just band-aids on a broken system.
Can
you just give me the summary of all that?
In
short: I know that what we are currently dealing with is an absolute disaster
of epic proportions with no good answers, no clear sides, and no room for either/or thinking
— despite what some leaders and Twitter users suggest. I know that our path
forward will need to be more creative than anything I’ve seen proposed by those
tasked with doing something.
Here
is the dilemma for those of us who care about equity, social justice, and
science: there are (at least) two competing justice issues on the table — the
risk of not having school for the students most marginalized, and the risk of
schools spreading a deadly disease to the students and families who are most
marginalized. Choosing to address one inherently worsens the other.
There
is no way around this fact. If we focus only on the school losses — academics,
social connections, services — we ignore the possibility that our efforts to
educate students might kill them or their parents, teachers, siblings, friends
— the very people upon which they depend for sustenance and support. And if we
are most worried about the spread of this deadly disease, we risk huge numbers
of students seeing whatever possible futures they had envisioned going down the
drain. And both of these issues are leading to a third — a mental health crisis
of a generation of Americans.
A
POSSIBLE SOLUTION
What
can we glean from these both/ands — these competing demands of
justice? What can be done by people who care about kids and educators and
health and are not in denial about the reality we are facing? Is there an
approach that is actually socially, racially, and economically just? Here’s my proposal
(with many elements similar to what others have suggested):
1. Some schools
should open. Some students should go.
We
should open some buildings for the most marginalized students — those who will
not eat without school, those who will not be safe in their homes without
school, those who are too young to be left home alone unsupervised but will be
left anyway because their parents have no choice but to work in order to feed
them, those with disabilities that cannot be supported outside of a school building.
And in order to address real economic concerns about things like childcare,
these building should be open five days a week for full school days for every
student attending.
2. Most schools
should stay closed. Most students should stay home.
Anyone
who does not fall into these categories of need must stay home so that there is
some hope of educating those who truly cannot stay home safely. How do we
decide who these students are? Some will be obvious. Others might require an
honor system: “Dear Parents, Given the life-threatening risk of Covid-19, we
are reserving all in-person school slots for students who have the most
pressing needs. Please indicate if one of the following applies….”
3. Open
buildings must have mandatory and robust safety protocols.
These
buildings can only be open if we do so safely. We cannot open schools that will
kill students, teachers, or parents, even if their jobs are on the line. This
means that opening can only happen in consultation with public health officials
and experts (P-12 educators and administrators do not have the expertise to
determine safety in this context. The people with this expertise must be at the
table). Minimally, it means regular, accurate, and accessible testing for
anyone entering a school building (or even better, an outdoor tent or field for
those schools innovative enough to shift learning outside — the much safer
place). TEST. TEST. TEST. When the NBA, the White House, or any other entity
with adequate resources wants to operate safely, regular testing is the
mandatory baseline. If students or staff contract Covid-19 outside of our
buildings we should know that very quickly. This would likely require mobile
testing sites that go school-to-school or placing nurses in buildings with
enough test kits for every person on site, every week. Opening safely also
means mandatory masks for anyone for whom they are appropriate, addressing air
circulation, bathroom usage, cleaning, social distancing, transportation, and
hiring, among other things.
4. Most
teaching should happen online with low-risk staff to supervise
and engage students in buildings.
Teachers
should be focused on one thing right now: transferring their practice to an
online model that is as engaging as humanly possible. We have a month to do it.
Don’t distract teachers by asking them to come up with three versions of plans
when two of them are unlikely to be safe to implement. This means that every
student in the country needs high speed internet and computer devices. Compared
to some of the other challenges we are facing, this one is easy — we should
spend the money to provide both. While most teachers and support staff will be
working from home, some staff will be needed to supervise the in-person school
buildings where some students will be engaging in online learning. These staff
should be well-compensated and given paid sick leave should they or anyone in
their households get sick or need to quarantine. They will need to be in
categories that have lower risk of death from Covid-19 — younger, no
comorbidities, limited exposure to Covid-19, etc. Perhaps they will be
AmeriCorps members, college students taking a gap year, or even some eager
teachers who would prefer to be in a classroom. And we will need enough of them
to have a pool of well-compensated subs when some people inevitably get sick.
5. We
should be advocating at state and federal levels for a nationwide investment in
our schools and guaranteed basic income for families with children.
Not
only should we be advocating for enough funding to support the safe opening of
some buildings and classrooms for the most marginalized students, and for
access to internet and devices for all students, we should also be demanding a
guaranteed basic income for all families. So long as there is a global pandemic
and we are offering very limited childcare and school options, we should make
sure families have enough income to be able to stay home with their children.
If we are asking parents to function as co-teachers in a national online
learning endeavor, we should honor their labor, time and contribution to
raising the next generation, and pay them to do so. It is not possible to raise
and educate children full time if you also have to work another job to take
care of your family. And we will all ultimately depend on us getting this right
for the next generation.
6. Finally,
we should be working with mental health professionals and organizations to put
together a robust suite of mental health services made as widely available as
possible, as soon as possible, to teachers, children and families. We are all
going to need them.
CONCLUSION
So,
what is the both/and answer to the question of how we should
educate students in the midst of a global pandemic? Make schools
work for the students and families who are most on the margins, who are at
greatest risk if school buildings remain closed, who cannot meet their basic
needs without them. Give these students full days and full weeks so that their
families have a reasonable chance of being able to support them. And the rest
of us stay home.
Will
it require sacrifice? Yes. There will be sacrifices whatever we do. Will many
families, including my own, struggle greatly? Yes. This will also be the case
whatever we do. But unlike many of the other proposals I’ve seen, at least this
response will be both hard and just.
Addendum
Since
this article was published, a number of people have correctly observed that
some districts have large populations of students who will need in-person
schooling while others have very few. First, I should clarify that I do not
think we should include every student in special education
and every student in a Title I school and every student
who qualifies for free or reduced lunch. I am talking about a much narrower
group of students. One of my own children is in a special education program in
a Title I school, but I don’t think he should receive in-person instruction
because we can afford to feed him, there is someone to stay home with him
during the day, he is not in immediate risk of abuse or neglect, and he can at
least somewhat access his support services online. Second, it is also true that
the districts with the most students in need of in-person schooling are those
who are likely to have the least funding. This reality highlights how immoral
and unjust our system of schooling was even before the pandemic hit. To
actually achieve what I propose will not only require partnering with public
health officials, lobbying the government for more money, getting community
trust and buy-in, but may also require that we rethink and disrupt things like
“district boundaries” when it comes to educating students.
Where
I live (Detroit, MI), I imagine these conversations will have to take place on
a county-wide level in which education leaders work together to determine how
many students need to be serviced in-person in the county (which includes many
different districts) and then share resources, buildings and staff as necessary
to make this happen. There may similarly need to be a sharing of resources to
make sure all students have computer devices and high-speed internet. Some may
think this sounds impossible. Perhaps it is. But I’d argue it is no more
unreasonable than anything else being proposed. The truth is, schooling as we
knew it six months ago is over. We are being given the opportunity to
re-envision education in a way that works for those we have historically
failed. We should try to do so. (Medium).
WRITTEN BY
Sophisticated and nuanced--thank you!
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