Push to reopen schools could leave out millions

President Joe Biden says he wants most schools serving kindergarten through eighth grade to reopen by late April, but even if that happens, it is likely to leave out millions of students, many of them minorities in urban areas.

“We’re going to see kids fall further and further behind, particularly low-income students of color,” said Shavar Jeffries, president of Democrats for Education Reform. “There’s potentially a generational level of harm that students have suffered from being out of school for so long.”

Like some other officials and education advocates, Jeffries said powerful teachers unions are standing in the way of bringing back students. The unions insist they are acting to protect teachers and students and their families.

In a call Thursday evening with teachers unions, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the federal government’s top infectious disease expert, said the reopening of K-8 classrooms nationally might not be possible on Biden’s time frame. He cited concern over new variants of the virus that allow it to spread more quickly and may be more resistant to vaccines.

Biden is asking for $130 billion for schools to address concerns by unions and school officials as part of a broader coronavirus relief package that faces an uncertain fate in Congress.

If his reopening goal is realized, millions of students might still have to keep learning from home, possibly for the rest of the school year.

California was an epicenter of infection in the first part of January, and public health officials say many of the state’s districts are in areas where transmission remains too high to reopen. But a statewide group called Open Schools California is pushing for reopening as soon as public health standards are met.

“I think that data will bear out that the children who have been most disadvantaged are going to be low-income children, Black and brown children, children with special education, learning differences, homeless and foster youth,” said Megan Bacigalupi, a mother of students in the Oakland public schools and one of the organizers.

It’s hard to tally exactly how many schools are open in person now because of the size and diffuse nature of the nation’s school system — and because districts’ approaches change frequently.

By early January, about a third of students in a sample of 1,200 U.S. school districts were in schools where classes had been held exclusively online since last March — many of them in cities. By last week, more than half of students were enrolled in schools where in-person learning was at least an option, according to Burbio, a data service tracking school-opening policies.

For the first time since shuttering schools in March, Atlanta began returning the youngest and special education students to some in-person learning last week. Other districts planning to reopen by early March include

Clark County, Nev., which includes Las Vegas; Kansas City, Mo.; Boston, and the big Ohio school systems.

Younger students in New York City already have the option to attend school in-person. Mayor Bill de Blasio said Friday that he expects middle school and high school students back in some capacity later this school year.

Jeffries acknowledges that there are reasons it’s harder to open schools in cities: They’re more densely populated, meaning the virus can spread faster; more people rely on public transportation, a potential hot spot for contamination; and more parents have frontline jobs that could expose them, and, in turn, their children, to the virus.

But he said the major obstacle to reopening city schools is political. “The teachers unions tend to be pretty obstinately opposed to going back to school,” Jeffries said.

In Chicago, only prekindergartners have been in school so far. Last week, the Chicago Teachers Union voted to teach online only in a showdown with the district over plans to bring students to school starting Monday. The union has authorized a strike if school officials retaliate, but negotiations are continuing.

Claiborne Wade, 31, has three children in the Chicago Public Schools system, ages 10, 9 and 7. Wade believes the district is not quite ready to reopen schools, and he favors distance learning for now.

Even so, he said minority students in large urban districts have fewer resources for online learning. He’s seen students from more affluent schools get a laptop and a tablet, and even a desk, while his kids only have a laptop to work with. Having both a laptop and tablet helps because the students can see their teacher on one screen and follow along with instruction materials on another, he said.

“It’s been going on for years, even before the pandemic hit,” he said.

“We’ve always been at the bottom of the totem pole, in receiving resources that we need.”