Across the U.S., schools have been finding innovative ways to serve their students, even after their doors were closed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Most obviously, teachers have been providing lessons and instruction through various forms of distance education. Districts are also offering free “grab-and-go” meals and even emergency child care centers built around the idea of social distancing. Groups like the Learning Policy Institute, the Network for Public Education, and Local Progress are documenting these and other ways that governmental entities like school districts are responding to need.
Because NEPC has been recognizing extraordinary Schools of Opportunity for the past five years, we’re starting to investigate how those schools have been responding to the crisis. The recognition program honors high schools that engage in research-based practices that focus on closing opportunity gaps.
Not surprisingly, the recognized schools are indeed working to provide free meals. 2015 honoree Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School, located in the Bronx, is typical of this trend. The New York school is offering students grab-and-go breakfasts and lunches that they can pick up on campus. The school’s coronavirus webpage also lists names and addresses for nearby food pantries, as well as resources where families can get free diapers.
At Rochester International Academy, which NEPC recognized as a School of Opportunity in 2016, principal Mary Andrecolich-Diaz canceled all afternoon classes when the shutdown seemed imminent, in order to allow the school’s interpreters to work with teachers and their many non-English-speaking refugee students. The school has been using Google Classroom and Chromebooks to continue instruction, using district-provided home Wi-Fi.
For Andrecolich-Diaz, the first goal was simply to guarantee the students could access schoolwork. But she also wanted to make sure that the school’s students could pass along health information to their families regarding the Coronavirus crisis. Many of those families are refugees who may be illiterate even in their own languages, adding to their vulnerable status. In the case of refugees from countries such as Burma, Nepal, and Somalia, some families were also unable to understand broadcast news media accounts that, if not in English, are typically only offered in one other language: Spanish.
Like the Rochester school, most Schools of Opportunity serve large numbers of students living in poverty – students for whom school is not just a learning experience, but a lifeline. Accordingly, these schools typically provide services like food pantries and health care that extend well beyond the classroom, a practice that is critical to closing opportunity gaps. They also serve large numbers of English learners and students with disabilities, as well as students who are, or whose family members are, without documentation. So the closures have the potential to hit their students especially hard.
Yet, like so many of their peers around the country, Schools of Opportunity educators have found ways to continue to help their students access needed assistance. As another example, Leland & Gray Union Middle & High School, also a 2016 honoree, is making mental health counselors available via email, Google Hangouts, and telephone.
“While we won’t be in our offices for you to drop by whenever you need, we are available,” they wrote in a heartfelt message on the Townshend, Vermont school’s website:
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