Community safety net works to reach students lost in virus chaos.

The voice from upstairs had the dry rasp of a recently-awakened teen who had spoken to no one yet.

“The wifi is out!” called our 10th-grade virtual learner.

We had noticed the power-blink ourselves; a shutter of the lights; the sound of a neighbor’s generator kicking in; a darkening of the screens in front of us. I had taken that moment as a cue to get more coffee. My husband checked the router. We were already back up by the time he called down.

It was just a blip, or a series of blips; some casual mishap of the power grid. Yet, all across the county, on a cloudless fall day, students at makeshift desks were calling out for help, wondering what happened to their power. And for many, there was no parent downstairs to remind them towait it out and return to “class;” or, if there was, they may have had their own work to restore. For some, the blink was all the invitation they needed to climb back into bed and sleep.

Since March, Anne Arundel County parents, teachers and officials have been discussing and debating a plan to reopen schools for the county’s youngest and neediest learners; talking about opportunity gaps; childhood hunger and neglect; technology deficits and alarming school dropout rates. Whether a 2-day-per-week “hybrid” modelof in-school attendance starts soon or not, damage has already been done.

The facts of the pandemic and all the accompanying uncertainty — the economic instability, the loss of life, the focus on catastrophic racial injustice— have added up to real delays, and sometimes voids, in learning, especially for vulnerable low-income students and those with special needs.

Researchers at the Urban Institute estimate that if children don’t return to regular in-school instruction by January 2021, lowincome students will lag 12.4 months behind relative to an average 6.8 months lag. And that doesn’t even take into account the 1,000 children who were expected to enroll in school this year and never did.

But in the midst of this disaster, as usual, the answer to catastrophe is community. It turns out that Anne A run del County has been building safety nets for years so that children calling out for help might, eventually, hear an answer.

“People don’t realize how much schools do ,” said Pam Brown, executive director of the Anne Arundel County Partnership for Children, Youth and Families.

The nonprofit group has been coordinating the county response to the overwhelming needs of its 85,000 virtual learners by deploying what she calls in her British accent “cricket teams,” of multi-disciplinary workers in hundreds of non-profit and not-for-profit agencies to meet with students and their families to provide them with what they need, whether that’s mental health help, food, homework assistance or technology support.

“We’ve all stepped it up. Every agency has tried to be aware of all cracks out there,” Brown said .“The truth is, vulnerable children are always going to be the most impacted in every way possible. Then you roll out a pandemic, and you multiply damage.”

With parents spread thin, and teachers unable to pick up on urgent needs, local community partners with established relationships with families through tutoring or after-school programs have been well-positioned to help.

Originally established as a college and career readiness organization, Charting Careers, which was only in its second year of operation, pivoted to pandemic response in March by sending its staff and volunteers out to participants’ homes.

“I was so thankful we had existing relationships with families before this all hit,” said Erin Snell, executive director of Charting Careers, which serves students in grades three and above.

“We were able to stop by with masks on and ask: What do you need? How are you doing? And then we listened to individual needs and trends and tried to connect people and gather resources and do something larger.”

In early spring, that meant gathering food and cleaning supplies for students’ families for whom transportation, work or family commitments made it impossible to find essentials like toilet paper. Mentors checked in with mentees and talked them through tough classwork and helped them secure Chromebooks. Many had cell phones, but not computers, and were falling behind simply trying to tap out answers.

Over the summer, they managed to turn virtual experiences with local professionals into virtual internships for their clients. Now they’re connecting students with virtual college tours and helping families develop better study spaces, including bringing them desks.

In March, CAT South sophomore Sarah Ramallosa planned to participate in a college tour with her Charting Careers mentor when the trip was suddenly canceled and schools shut down.

“At first, I thought woohoo! I’ll get a really long spring break!” said Sarah, 16, now a junior in the program with dreams of becoming a video game animator .“Then all of our plans got further and further from really happening.”

Though Sarah says her college plans remain “somewhat undefined,” her mentor continues to remind her about standardized testing dates and steer her toward virtual college tours, reminders that would have been plastered along the hallways in school.

When systems stall, students are at risk of “losing their way,” said Leon Thomas III, director of college and career readiness for Charting Careers. He is on the lookout for that with the students he visits in their homes.

“It’s a heavy lift. We’re all trying to get it right for our scholars and students. But it’s a collective lift; not something we can do alone,” Thomas said. “We are trying to take care of ourselves and our families and survive. Literally, this is about survival… I believe this has driven us all to a position of community.”

Sometimes, it’s easy to forget that in March, the state legislature passed a $4 billion-per-year education overhaul to address the many inequities that already existed in our system. With the governor’s veto and the growing economic crisis, it is doubtful we will be able to invest in reform for years to come.

Which means mentoring and monetary contributions to food banks and other nonprofits are more critical than ever.

“I do worry about it and uncertainties lie ahead of us,” said Luz Ramallosa, Sarah’s mom. “It makes us think about preparing ourselves for the future. Because of all the uncertainties we have to be open to new learnings. I tell my kids: You’ve got to be a Girl Scout: Always be prepared. That’s how we prepare for the future and decrease anxieties.”

It is urgent now tha twe all take on that Girl Scout mantra and prepare; that every one of us figures out how to contribute to a cricket team—with books, food, eyes and ears. Because this isn’t just a blink; this is a system-wide failure of power.

And the children, including the one who I’m pretty sure just fell back to sleep upstairs in front of a restored computer screen, are more alone than they have ever been.