Alternative education students in a tight spot

Although he has not moved since the pandemic began, Malek Al Rafai does not know where he will start school when campuses in Alief ISD and across greater Houston reopen.

The 15-year-old eighth grader was sent to a disciplinary alternative education program in February, about a month before schools across the region closed to help slow the spread of COVID-19. He admits he made a mistake — he got in a fight with a classmate — and he accepted that he would attend Harris County’s Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Program until the end of the school year.

However, he does not know whether he will have to go back to the alternative school when schools reopen because he has lacked internet access and a computer to log onto the school’s virtual lessons since the campus closed.

“I haven’t had school work since schools closed, but I would like to,” Al Rafai said.

School leaders across greater Houston and Texas are deciding what to do with students who were at disciplinary alternative schools or juvenile justice alternative schools. Should they get credit for distance learning days? Should they finish out their punishment time at the alternative schools once campuses reopen, regardless of whether they were engaged in distance learning?

The Texas Education Agency has said the decision is up to districts. For example, agency officials wrote, if a student was assigned to an alterna

tive school for 45 days, but only served 10 before schools closed, districts could let the student reenroll at his or her home school when campuses reopen, or start on day 11 of their placement.

A group of juvenile justice advocacy groups sent a letter to Houston-area district officials last week asking that students’ time at home be counted toward the time they were ordered to spend at alternative schools. Leaders at the University of Houston’s Juvenile and Children’s Advocacy Project, Disability Rights Texas, Texas Appleseed’s School-to-Prison Pipeline Project, the Children’s Defense Fund of Texas, the Earl Carl Institute for Legal & Social Policy and ONE Houston also asked districts to consider reducing or waiving alternative school placements “on an individual basis so that students can return to their home campuses during the 2020—2021 school year with a fresh start.”

Christina Beeler, a staff attorney with UH’s Juvenile and Children’s Advocacy Project, said most of the students her group represents and most of those sent to alternative schools are at-risk and already struggling in school.

“They are the last kids anyone is thinking about right now, and that is especially troubling right now because they were last kids anyone was thinking about in January, too,” Beeler said. “But these are the kids who are going to need the most when they get back.”

So far, Houston ISD, Lamar Consolidated ISD and Clear Creek ISDs said they would count days students logged onto virtual learning or submitted written packets of school work toward their alternative school days. When schools closed, HISD had about 340 students on alternative school placements.

Cypress-Fairbanks ISD is taking its accommodations further. In an email to the advocacy groups, general counsel Marney Collins Sims wrote that district officials have asked principals to consider reducing or waiving alternative school placements for non-violent offenses. No alternative school placements will extend beyond the end of this school year, except for several students with gun violations.

In addition, all elementary school alternative placements have been waived, and those students are getting instruction from their home campus teachers. Spokeswoman Leslie Francis said in a statement that all suspension actions are now considered served and closed, but she said the advocates’ letter did not influence the district’s decision-making.

In Clear Creek ISD, where about 110 secondary students were in alternative school settings when campuses closed, district officials have enacted a “stay put” policy for students. That partly is because of logistics, said Karen Engle, assistant superintendent of secondary education. Students have to withdraw from their home campuses and enroll in their alternative school, Clear Path Alternative High School, and do the same when they return to their regular schools. Enrollments, however, have to be done in person and have been suspended because of COVID-19.

That means students who were supposed to enroll in the alternative school will have distance learning at their home school, but students who were set to be sent back to their home schools after finishing their time at the alternative school will have to keep taking classes through the disciplinary program.

“The benefit of this really is the teachers at DAEP (disciplinary alternative education program) know those students,” Engle said, crediting smaller student-to-staff ratios at the alternative school. “They’ve done more to help engage those students in learning than they would have gotten at their home campuses. We really wanted to make sure this would work.”

Alief ISD leaders told the advocacy groups the days students log into distance learning would be counted toward their alternative school days, but declined an interview request.

That news means little for Al Rafai.

He has not been able to log on, and the most contact he has had with teachers is a brief daily phone call to “check in.” He has not had any educational services since schools closed, and before school closures, he already had to be held back because of a language barrier that came with him when he immigrated from Syria three years ago.

He is hoping he will begin to get instruction soon. Al Rafai said someone from the district called his mother and set up a time for them to pick up a laptop he can use for school work. He hopes school leaders will let him go back to his home campus because he was unable to log onto the distance learning for more than a month.

“It’s not fair,” Al Rafai said. “It wasn’t my fault.”