Kids back to class — if WiFi cooperates
First day for Oakland elementary is ‘just plain weird’
Joy Ghansah’s image froze, her face in a perpetual smile as her online class of Oakland kindergartners waited for her to say something, to talk about the stuffed animal in her lap or to read them a book.
The little girl wearing a tiara squirmed. The little boy in a superhero suit fidgeted. Another boy hid behind his mom’s long hair.
Seconds ticked by in silence for the new Sankofa United Elementary students until Ghansah’s WiFi kicked in again and she came back to life on the screen.
This was not how a first day of school was supposed to be. There were no crying kindergartners clinging to parents Monday morning, no loud shouts across the playground or hugs after a long summer apart. The hallways were still at the North Oakland school, with chairs stacked upside down on desks in the classrooms.
“It is definitely unprecedented; it’s a unique way of starting and just plain weird,” said Superintendent Kyla JohnsonTrammell. “You know it’s the first day; there’s kind
of the butterflies, but you’re still at home.”
Oakland Unified, with one of the earliest start dates in the state, offered something of a first look at what the new school year would look like. The vast majority of California’s 6 million students will attend class from afar until the pandemic eases enough to return to an inperson academic environment.
For now, the district’s 36,000 students will attend school remotely, their teachers and classmates nothing more than images filling little boxes on their computer screens for an hour or two a day. And for the first week, most students are spending only about 30 minutes each day online with their teachers for checkin and attendance, with assignments sent via email or Google Classroom.
By the end of the school day Monday, more than 21,000 students had logged on at some point during the day, although more attendance reports were still coming in, district officials said. In addition, teachers held 2,040 Zoom sessions.
“The first day of school is a really exciting time and that isn’t different,” said Dennis Guikema, principal of the school, a new merger between Sankofa and Kaiser Elementary. “It’s too bad it’s virtual. We can’t be together in person.”
Guikema said teachers and district officials had worked hard to get ready for distance learning, and they were doing their best to create welcoming and supportive environments for students online.
About half the school’s 230 students will need to borrow a computer — and there were enough in stock to make that happen, he said. In the spring, many students didn’t have a device or WiFi or had to share with siblings or working parents. That has to change, he said.
“We want to make sure the families have the technology for their children to use exclusively,” he said.
In the coming weeks, the city is expected to give out 25,000 laptops to Oakland families through the Oakland Undivided campaign — computers they can keep, Guikema said.
On Monday morning, parent Amna Asghar stood in a short line in the Sankofa parking lot to get a Chromebook for her secondgrade daughter, Ava, who stood at her side.
It was an odd way to spend the first day of school, she acknowledged.
“That’s just the way of the world right now,” she said, adding that it was a little sad and confusing for her daughter. “She was ready with her backpack and I told her she wouldn’t need it.”
But a lack of devices wasn’t the only issue Monday. Many teachers and families were plagued by technology glitches: lost passwords, bad WiFi, garbled conversations and often more than one person talking at once because of streaming delays.
Many parents had to juggle
Zoom sessions for more than one child amid work schedules and other obligations.
Nicole Hayes, head custodian at Hillcrest School, has 13yearold twins entering eighth grade at Elmhurst Middle School. Keeping them active and engaged has been challenging amid her own work schedule and other family issues.
“I’m overwhelmed,” she said as she picked up meals for her children at Sankofa, one of 22 district food distribution sites. “It’s frustrating and mindboggling.”
Parent Eleza Jaeger also felt the stress of a first day of online school.
She had to toggle between each of her daughters’ separate first days on Zoom, with Hazel, 9, in fourth grade, and Rhye, 6, in first.
“That fresh, new school year feeling — we’re not feeling that,” she said, “And (we’re) kind of missing it.”
Exacerbating the frustration for families was a lack of clarity on what the average online school day will look like for students. The district and labor officials have not yet reached an agreement on working conditions for teachers, including the length of the workday or how many hours of live instruction will be expected of educators.
An agreement on distance learning in the spring, after schools closed in midMarch, reduced the teacher workday to four hours and had no live instruction requirements. Many students never saw their teachers again, even online, with class assignments posted and turned in online.
Oakland Unified spokesman John Sasaki said Monday that negotiations are ongoing and the district is hoping to ensure teachers are interacting with students more this fall, although the amount of time is still part of the talks.
District officials were expected to update the status of the talks Monday afternoon.
San Francisco schools will require teachers to participate in at least two hours of live instruction per day.
Peter Wilson, a fourthgrade teacher at Sankofa, said he plans to teach live online for at least two hours a day, often in small groups to give focused attention to his students.
He met with his students via Zoom from his classroom on the second floor, the WiFi so sketchy that he vowed to teach from home Tuesday.
“I wish they were here,” he said after his online session ended.
His classroom was cluttered with boxes of books and all the chairs were upside down on top of desks.
“It’s a new style of teaching,” he said. “We gotta do what we gotta do.”
He noted that parents were concerned about the lack of live teaching in the spring. He had told them things would be different this fall.
“We are teaching this year,” he told them. “Yeah, we are teaching.”