“I want to thank MPS for providing meals and especially for providing homework, that’s a plus,”
‘Great time to read every book in your house’
says Nia Ramirez as she and her four children who attend ALBA Elementary School head home after receiving their meals. MPS began providing free meals from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday through Friday. Students are learning from home due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Students and parents picked up homework packets and bag lunches Monday from 20 Milwaukee Public Schools locations, the first day of the month-long closure of Wisconsin’s largest school district.
Widespread uncertainty remains over how the families of 75,000 mostly low-income students will handle child care, meals and at-home learning — and how exactly the district plans to serve students into the foreseeable future.
On Friday Gov. Tony Evers ordered all K-12 schools in the state closed until April 4. Milwaukee said it would reopen April 14 after its spring break April 6-13. But that could be extended, MPS Superintendent Keith Posley said
Monday at a news conference.
“Right now there is not a definitive answer of what we will do, but we will all be putting our heads together as a district to talk about that, and what that would look like, if this proceeds beyond the governor’s mandate,” Posley said.
At South Division High School, staff in blue rubber gloves stood behind a long table in the entryway to provide anyone who arrived with lunches and packets of worksheets. Spanish, Burmese and Arabic interpreters were on hand, and families trickled in.
Inside the lunch bags Monday: fried chicken, mac and cheese, vegetables, cornbread, an orange and chocolate milk.
The workbooks were standardized, so all third graders across the district received the same materials. They’re optional and won’t count for a grade, Posley said. They’re meant to keep kids engaged in learning — and if a parent wants to challenge their third grader, pick up a fourth grade workbook, Posley
said.
And if students have access to the internet, the workbook lists online educational resources for them.
“We want them to have very constructive, academic, conducive things for them to do,” Posley said. “This is a continuation of the classroom.”
Across town, Michelle Berg and Gladger Brooks brought their granddaughter, a K-5 student at Thurston Woods School, to pick up a workbook at North Division High School.
“Any days they miss, that’s education that they’re missing. We have to do our best to educate them as we can at home,” Brooks said.
Also making a run into North Division Monday, Lorena Bowen of Milwaukee said she isn’t worried her four kids won’t be learning in the month off — she’s an educator herself and she knows where to find good materials online. Her concern is they’ll soon be isolated to their home without an end
in sight.
But before that happens, Bowen planned to return to the school Tuesday with her kids. Packets weren’t available yet for her son in seventh grade. An MPS spokesman said some sites ran out of or were missing materials for certain grade levels Monday. They’ll be restocked tomorrow, he said.
“It’s an awesome service to have, especially with so many people who rely on schools,” Bowen said.
Four friends who stopped by Andrew S. Douglas Middle School Monday carried lunch bags and flyers with directions to log into an online learning platform. Staff there said they’d handed out about 70 lunches in the first hour. About 12:30 at North Division, it was about 130 meals.
The meals MPS gives students often provide crucial nutrition. According to state data, 84% of students in the district qualify for free or reduced lunches and are considered economically disadvantaged.
Families of small MPS school asked to quarantine
The students, staff and families of Hopkins-Lloyd Community School — an elementary school serving about 150 students in the North Division neighborhood — likely won’t stop by a lunch distribution site, though. They’ve been asked to self-quarantine after an employee there tested “presumptive positive” for the coronavirus over the weekend.
Posley declined to answer questions Monday about the employee, including whether the person was a teacher.
Wanda Lavender of Milwaukee said that her family wasn’t tested even though three of her daughters attend Hopkins-Lloyd, and two of them were coughing.
Lavender, 38, received a robocall Saturday night from the principal of her children’s school saying that she or a child of hers may have been around someone diagnosed with COVID-19.
On Sunday, she said, her 12-year-old son, who attends a different school, was getting warm and was light-headed. Two of her daughters, 7 and 9, were coughing but feeling fine.
“My fear is that it could be corona and I have no way to protect anyone who I came in contact with,” Lavender said.
She said on the phone that she is selfquarantining with her children.
“I have to do what I have to do as a person and make sure that I’m not spreading this disease and make sure that I’m doing my part as a citizen,” she said.
Amy Mizialko, president of the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association, said the union is looking at ways to support the families of Hopkins-Lloyd.
“Obviously we’re concerned about the health of all Hopkins-Lloyd families and students, we’re concerned about their accessibility to food,” Mizialko said.
“We have begun conversations about — what are the additional safety nets and supports that Hopkins-Lloyd families will need during this time,” she said.
Those discussions will continue. MPS administrators are still making decisions about what comes next, if they need to expand the number of lunch sites, how they can give kids online instruction.
Mizialko, observing the scene Monday at South Division High School, was “pleased with what’s being offered on Day 1.”
But given the lack of academic structure in the next month, she had a simple wish for MPS families: read.
“It’s a great time to read every book in your house,” she said.