Access issues loom on Day 1
Baltimore-area schools start year online, but thousands of kids lack way to engage
On the first day of a new school year in the midst of a pandemic, tens of thousands of students will likely be left behind, unable to show up Tuesday to greet their classmates and teachers on a computer screen.
Despite efforts by Baltimore-area school systems, students who lack internet access or a laptop won’t be signing on to the live online classes, their only opportunity for instruction until schools reopen. And they aren’t likely to get connected quickly.
The Maryland Department of Education has no reliable data on how many of its approximately 900,000 public school students lack access to a reliable internet connection or computers. Neither do many school system officials who say they’ve spent the summer attempting to reach disconnected households.
“The fact that schools will start on Tuesday without a clear understanding statewide of who can and who cannot access their classroom is a failure beyond epic proportions,” said state Senate President Bill Ferguson, a Baltimore Democrat. “Nothing should have been prioritized over this basic infrastructure question over the last 90 days. If kids aren’t in class, nothing else about the education system matters.”
He described the situation as the equivalent “of sending students to school without a roof.”
“That should be unimaginable,” Ferguson said.
The problem has been looming over school and state officials for months, but they will have to face it head on Tuesday.
In places like Harford County, where laptops are on back order, students in kindergarten through grade 3 won’t have devices to access classes unless their family provides them, administrators said.
Portions of Baltimore County remain unserved by internet service providers. Commercial entities tend to pass over rural parts of the county for expansion because there are not enough prospective customers to justify the infrastructure investment.
While many school systems used federal coronavirus relief funds to purchase internet hotspots, those devices won’t function in areas that also lack cellphone service.
In Baltimore City, the school system has paid the $650,000 Comcast bill to provide internet to 14,000 disadvantaged children, negotiated to buy up to 20,000 hot spots from T-Mobile, and handed out 30,000 laptops.
tion in many Western countries, whose diets are heavy in animal products, corresponded to considerable reductions in greenhouse gas footprints. “We’re figuring out ways to help each other and create a safer, healthier environment.”
Sanders became a vegan more than two decades ago and says her acne and sinus problems went away. “Never before did I really make the connection that those problems were linked to the food I was eating,” she said.
Jacquelyn Bey, owner of With Love Co: A Plant-Based Sip & Eat Joint, has found her customers becoming more interested in the vegan lifestyle because of documentaries. She cited recent films such as Game Changers and What the Health as contributing to the conversation about the link between plant-based eating and health.
“Most of my customer base are meat eaters. But they’re curious about the vegan lifestyle,” said Bey, who offers a range of smoothies, juices and customer favorites such as sweet potato salad. She found a home for her products at a small shop in Parkville in August 2019. “We make people feel at home because they’re eating foods they can trust. It’s like being in Grandma’s kitchen.”
Also last summer, Taneea Yarborough and her husband, James, opened Gangster Vegan Organics in Federal Hill. The couple switched to a vegan diet after Taneea was diagnosed with breast cancer.
“You can’t separate health with what you put into your body,” said Yarborough, a two-time cancer survivor.
Some options on their menu such as the ODB broccoli burger and the Swizz Beets burger are inspired by hip-hop artists.
“I think curiosity of veganism within the Black community has always been there,” Yarborough said. “It’s just that it’s becoming more accessible, and it’s becoming easier for people to change their lifestyle.”
Across the city in Waverly, My Mama’s Vegan restaurant has been serving mostly vegan options since October 2019. But in March, owner Debonette Wyatt-James says, her restaurant shifted to offering only plant-based dishes.
“My customers were an inspiration behind that,” Wyatt-James said. “We added more vegan dishes, and it wiped out the other menu we had.” They also had to add more staff to prepare meals such as vegan “chickn cheesesteaks” and buffalo cauliflower bites. They plan to move this month to a larger spot four blocks away on Greenmount Avenue.
“Earlier this year it was just me and one
other person,” Wyatt-James said. “Now we have seven more, and our location is at capacity.”
“I believe social media created an awareness and a buzz about veganism,” Wyatt-James said. “When you see people like the members of the Wu-Tang Clan or Beyoncé trying to go vegan, it’s inspirational and it makes people wonder, ‘What am I missing?’”
Naijha Wright-Brown, of The Land of Kush , one of the city’s oldest Black-owned vegan restaurants, said she and her husband, Gregory Brown, will open a second location on Chester Street in East Baltimore toward the end of next year.
When they opened their eatery in 2010, they were among the first restaurants in town to offer a100% plant-based menu with comfort food such as sweet potatoes, vegan mac and cheese, and vegan crab cakes.
The couple plans for their new space, Land of Kush, VeganSoul Bistro, to seat up to 75 people and hopes it can be a hub for entertainment and lectures.
Health experts say that people interested in changing their dietary transitions don’t have to go all or nothing, as there are different layers to becoming vegan, or vegetarian, which excludes meat, fish and poultry, but still includes some animal products. Even shifting eating a little bit, experts say, can make a difference for the climate, and for health.
“The foods in a plant-based diet are much more healthy for a body to digest,” said Joycelyn Peterson, a registered dietitian, director of Nutritional Sciences at Morgan State University and longtime advocate of veganism.
Peterson pointed to evidence-based studies showing that people who eat more plant-based foods tend to live longer.
Nicole Foster and her husband, Dwight Campbell, started Baltimore’s Cajou Creamery, a plant-based ice cream business, because their two sons, ages 8 and13, love to eat ice cream but are lactose intolerant.
After experimenting in their home kitchen by making their own vegan ice
cream using almond milk and then cashew milk, the couple liked the results.
They opened an online ice cream store two years ago and now sell and deliver seven globally inspired flavors such as Baklava from the Middle East and Cortadito from Cuba in pint containers to porches across the city. They expect to open a small shop on Howard Street before the end of the year, something reminiscent of the quaint gelato shops in Rome.
Foster says she believes she and her husband, Dwight, have created something that is not only natural, but also better tasting.
“The cashew represents reinvention,” Foster said. “Through our ice cream, we reintroduce a way to see a sweet treat that we love in a different light.”
Tatyana Turner is a 2020-21 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of the GroundTruth Project, a national service program that places emerging journalists in local newsrooms. She covers Black life and culture.