A first day of school like no other
Tuesday marks the return of classes for Baltimore area K-12 public school students and it’s a first day of school like no other. No tearful family goodbyes at the bus stop, no high-fives with reunited classmates, no brown bag lunches to pack, or hall lockers to locate or playground games to win during recess. For the first time ever, students in Baltimore and the surrounding counties will have a first day of school that begins with the push of a computer power button, most from the comfort (and safety) of their homes. It’s not a new experience exactly: For most, the spring semester featured a similar online routine not long after the COVID-19 pandemic emptied schools and other public spaces. But it does redefine in a fundamental way what it means to be a student in the 2020-2021 school year. And hold onto your hats, parents, teachers, students and the rest, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride is just starting.
Even before the first keyboard strike, the business of deciding how best to educate kids under these bizarre circumstances has been unsettling. Should it be in-person or not? How should systems address inequities such as access to computers and Wi-Fi (a circumstance aggravated by the economic downturn and job losses caused by the pandemic)? What’s the proper role of parents and guardians? People even had to learn a new vocabulary — synchronous and asynchronous learning — to draw a distinction between livestreamed instruction and the previously recorded variety. Which is preferable? Synchronous. Most of the time. But there is some benefit to recorded learning sessions as well. Oh, don’t get that started again. And then there’s the annoyance of having local school systems and the state superintendent and governor seeming at odds over reopening plans with eleventh-hour directives.
Here’s the only comfort we can offer parents and educators struggling with this challenge, caught up in all the uncertainty and wishing there was a clearer road map for how to educate: That’s pretty much what everyone involved thought during the so-called “second wave” of the 1918-1919 Spanish flu pandemic. School administrators in major U.S. cities were befuddled. Some opened as usual. Some did not. Virtual learning wasn’t an option so the stakes were high. In Baltimore, for example, schools opened as usual in mid-September with more worries about a teacher shortage caused by World War I then by health concerns. That lasted less than a month. The city shut down its schools on Oct. 9 as the outbreak worsened (in defiance of the health department, incidentally). Students were not allowed to return to class until Nov. 4 and many parents kept their sons and daughters at home much longer, fearful of the H1N1 outbreak.
The lesson here? As Robert Burns pointed out, the best laid plans of mice and men sometimes go awry. Last week, Baltimore City Public Schools CEO Sonja Santelises sat down for a virtual conversation with The Baltimore Sun Editorial Board and offered this prediction for the first day: 80% of her students will be plugged in (and that’s her most optimistic forecast). Some of that absent one-fifth of the student body will not have a computer, others lack internet access while some will be simply missing adequate adult supervision (or personal motivation). Officials have been working hard to remedy all these circumstances but the challenge is substantial. How many students will fall through the cracks?
And yet that’s far from the most worrisome piece. Across the
Baltimore City Public Schools CEO Sonja Santelises offered this prediction for the first day: 80% of her students will be plugged in. Some of the one-fifth of the students who will be absent will not have a computer, others will have no internet access, and some will simply lack adequate adult supervision. Officials have been working hard to remedy these circumstances, but the challenge is substantial. How many students will fall through the cracks?
nation, colleges that have chosen in-person learning are discovering that campuses are not immune to the spread of the coronavirus. Just as Towson University recently had to reverse course and close its on-campus dorms when dozens of COVID-19 tests of students, faculty and staff returned positive in the first week of classes, public schools that attempt in-person instruction may encounter the same obstacle. Learning should not be a super-spreading event with students bringing home a virus to loved ones. Yet New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently predicted that he expects K-12 schools to run into the same challenges as colleges with a surge in transmission rates that will force schools to close. “Some of that is inevitable,” he warned.
In the meantime, families can be thankful that at least we have an online option. It may be difficult, untested, uneven and leave too many behind but at least it can reduce the spread of COVID-19 which continues to take as many as 1,200 lives each day in the United States. What would schools have done 102 years ago if they had that choice? Probably exactly what educators are doing today.