1,000 HOME VISITS TO RECONNECT KIDS
Volunteer army turns out to knock on doors, find out why students aren’t in Zoom classes
A thousand homes.
As the coronavirus pandemic threatens yet another semester of in-person learning, San Bernardino City Unified School District officials recently continued a long-standing biannual tradition of meeting truant students where they live to see what can be done to get them back in class.
In years past, volunteers engaged as many as 600 kids in a day.
On Oct. 13, during the district’s first Operation Student Recovery of the 2020-21 school year, nearly 40 people visited 105 homes. On Feb. 23, district officials set out to visit 1,000.
Set ambitiously high as 48,000 San Bernardino students complete their first full year of distance learning, Marlene Bicondova, director of the district’s Positive Youth Development department, found just how easy visiting that many homes is with an army of volunteers on board.
“This particular oath meant a lot to us,” Bicondova said last Friday, “and it was incredibly energizing because the entire community came out to help us.”
Among the 200 or so people to lend a hand on Feb. 23 were district leaders, staff members from every department and officials from several schools.
Community members, parishioners from multiple churches and at least one city leader also knocked on doors.
Truancy at San Bernardino schools is up 6% over last year, with 22% of students chronically absent in distance learning, district spokeswoman Maria Garcia said in an email. The district plans to keep all students in distance learning through the remainder of the school year, though some neighboring districts are preparing to bring elementary students back to campuses after getting a green light from the state.
School board President Gwen Dowdy-Rodgers last week commended the community for banding together amid an unprecedented public health crisis to help kids get back on track during yet another unconventional semester.
“We talk often about the village,” she said, “and the village really was ignited.”
While Operation Student Recovery 1000 was a one-day event, Bicondova and her staff have already and will continue to resolve issues volunteers found while
speaking with families.
Attendance barriers ranged from technology impediments that district staffers were able to cure that day by providing new laptops and internet hot spots, to motivation lapses, to health issues, Bicondova said.
Some families needed food. Some kids needed school supplies.
District officials spent the rest of the week delivering such necessities to those homes.
“We see this as a San Bernardino problem, not a school district problem,” Bicondova said. “We want San Bernardino kids to thrive, and when we saw everybody come out to help and do the work alongside us, it was incredibly energizing. We heard that people were excited to speak with parents and kids firsthand after having been locked down for so long.
“I cannot tell you how many comments and thanks we got for setting it up. A lot of people felt they did some good that day.”
School attendance is mandatory in California, even if it is virtual, the district
— Marlene Bicondova, director of the district’s Positive Youth Development department
said in a news release.
Assignments this year have been and still are being graded, with quarter and semester grades playing a vital role in determining whether a student moves up a grade as he or she would before distance learning.
As is the case statewide, Garcia said, the district's D and F grades increased for secondary students compared to pre-coronavirus times. Furthermore, district officials have noticed a slight drop in achievement on district assessments for elementary school students.
“However, many students are succeeding,” Garcia
added, “thanks to their own initiative, regular attendance, active class participation and the commendable job our teachers have been doing to keep students engaged.”
Having expanded the scope of Operation Student Recovery and receiving plenty of positive feedback both in person and online, future outreach efforts have quite the act to follow.
“We'd like to continue this, especially during distance learning,” Bicondova said. “It's been hard on San Bernardino kids, and we are willing to do what it takes to get our kids the education they need. … I guarantee we'll have a bigger one, bigger than 1,000.”
“We're excited to be a part of the solution.”
Added Dowdy-Rodgers: “There are just multiple things taking place that are not normal under these circumstances, ongoing concerns. Being such a large institution that touches so many people in our community, we were able to identify issues simply by knocking on doors, asking how we can help.
“Many people didn't expect to be where they're at now,” she continued. “We're here to say, ‘We're in this together.'”