Reopening plans for schools this fall

There has never been a time in our country where education has faced a greater challenge.

COVID-19 has challenged school administrators to find innovative ways to provide education while minimizing the health risk.

That, in and of itself, is a challenge. The lack of clear leadership from both the national and state level has only made the task more difficult.

Based on what we are seeing as our local school districts roll out their plans for the start of the school year in just three weeks, it’s obvious a lot of careful thought and planning have gone into this effort. Even so, it’s worth noting that even these plans may have to be altered in significant ways and with little warning. School districts’ contingency plans may ultimately be as important — perhaps more important — than what we see as the school year begins.

Most plans give parents the option of how much time their children will attend schools and how much time they’ll learn online.

The safety aspects of “doing school” and the limited support provided to our school districts is further complicated by another obligation, one that schools bear largely by default because of a failure of our government to meet many of the challenges our nation has faced persistently for decades now.

Just as it is with our nation’s mental health crisis, which is often administered through our prison system, our educational system has been burdened with the staggering task of dealing with the consequences of poverty, something are nation has always failed to address in a meaningful way.

For many children from poor households — in Mississippi, that’s 1-in4 children — schools exist not simply to educate, but to feed and provide a safe environment for children during the workday.

The breakfasts and lunches these children receive at school are often the only real nutrition they receive. Likewise, for many children, school is the only safe, supervised environment available to them.

Online learning exposes another failure. Much, perhaps most, of the teaching will be delivered online, which is problematic given that our state has among the worst access to broadband in the nation.

There is only now a real effort to make broadband available in our rural communities.

The schools do the best they can, but just as it is with relying on the prison system to provide a place for the mentally ill, relying on schools to feed and care for our children is asking a system to do something it was never intended to do.

Our schools make a valiant effort to meet those needs, even at a time when the real function of schools — to educate our children — is incredibly difficult. There are no other options, after all, because we have failed to address poverty in our nation in a meaningful way.

For the wealthiest nation the world, that’s a damning indictment.