The new CMS: No grades for now, a digital divide - and plenty of challenges ahead.
Tiffany North knows that her eight-year-old son, Quincy, counts off the days in his head.
From one up to sixty — that’s how long the family has free wifi at home, courtesy of Spectrum. Without internet, Quincy and his sister, Victoria, would be cut off from online learning while their charter school, KIPP Charlotte, is closed to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
“He’s asked me, what happens after that?” North said. To herself, she wonders if that will mean an additional bill to pay once the 60-day period ends.
When cases of COVID-19 began spreading in Charlotte, the pandemic reshaped education as students and teachers navigate learning from far apart.
Making the transition more difficult: the divide between schools and families best prepared to launch into online, remote classes and those scrambling to access technology while facing financial instability and other challenges at home.
Weeks after Gov. Roy Cooper’s first executive order closed schools across the state, CMS and other public school districts are still working through what it means to provide a public education during a global pandemic. Earlier this month, the state board of education told school districts to not assign grades unless they can ensure all students have equal access to remote learning.
The state Department of Public Instruction has said that the policies for promoting students to the next grade have not changed, after hoaxes spread about students having to repeat a year.
Seniors who were passing their classes as of March 13, the last day before schools closed, will be marked as passing for the year, while those were were failing will have the chance to pass by taking a final exam.
In CMS, students were given supplemental, optional assignments for three weeks while the district awaited guidance from the state on when and how to teach new material. New learning started on April 6, but deputy superintendent Matt Hayes said in a video update that CMS would not issue grades yet while it continued to survey students’ access to the internet and technology.
Instead, teachers will make assignments, provide feedback and take anecdotal notes on student work, which may later be converted into a grade, chief academic officer Brian Kingsley said.
In kindergarten through third grade, student assignments will be done through hard copy packets distributed through CMS’ network of meal pick-up sites, while older students will receive their work online.
Students in kindergarten through fifth grade are expected to be in instructional hours for a maximum of two hours a day, Kingsley said. In the upper grades, kids will be in class for 3 hours per course per week on a semester schedule, and 90 minutes per course per week if they are on a year-long schedule.
Instructional sessions will be recorded, Kingsley said, with the understanding that not all students can log on at the same time. Teachers will also host office hours to stay in touch with their students, and families are encouraged to reach out to their child’s teacher if they are struggling with internet or device access at home.
Disparities exposed
The ongoing crisis only exacerbates existing disparities, CMS chief equity officer Frank Barnes said. Roughly 40% of CMS students qualify for free or subsidized meals, and about 4,000 students receive McKinney-Vento services, a federal program that provides services for students in unstable housing situations.
The district serves about 150,000 children and has issued roughly 80,000 devices for students to take home during the closure. In addition to gaps in technology, Barnes also emphasized less obvious disparities, such as access to quiet and peaceful learning spaces or parents with time to help young children navigate new assignments.
“When you talk about food insecurity, transportation, who is allowed to shelter-in-place because of income, all those things are being exposed,” Barnes said. “We’ve really tried to figure out how can we equitably and appropriately serve our diverse communities.”
During the closures, school board chair Elyse Dashew has been visiting the meal pick-up sites to thank employees. At a recent school board meeting, she emphasized the many needs CMS has to address for its students during a school shutdown.
“As a public school district, our core business is teaching and learning,” Dahsew said. “But I don’t think people understood until this shutdown how many students rely on our schools for basic things like food in their bellies.”
For parents like Janine Bettis, the steps CMS has taken to close the digital divide have been essential. Bettis, a mother of four CMS students and a college kid back home during the coronavirus shutdown, is taking online classes as well towards a degree in early childhood education.
The family is currently staying with Bettis’ parents in their three-bedroom home. Even though they have internet access, so many people logging on at the same time slowed down the connection, Bettis said. For the first week, the kids also shared devices because the pick-up site misplaced a Chromebook meant for her family.
Receiving a hotspot from CMS helped with the strain on the network, and now each student has a device to work off of, Bettis said. While her children completed the supplemental work, she said the start of new curriculum would be the real test of the transition to online learning.
“I know all the pressure falls on me,” she said. “But I’m blessed to have really smart kids.”
Growing Gaps
Pat Millen, executive director of E2D, a nonprofit that provides laptops to students who cannot afford them, estimates that between 10,000 to 12,000 families in Mecklenburg County do not have access to technology at home, such as a laptop or tablet that can be used for schoolwork. But even with the right device, Millen said, learning can’t happen without a reliable internet connection.
More than 50,000 homes in Mecklenburg County — or about 13% — do not have internet access, according to 2017 U.S. Census Bureau estimates.
The highest concentration of homes without internet access in the county form an arc north of uptown – stretching from West Boulevard in the west to Central Avenue in the east. In some areas there, more than 45% of households don’t have access to the web, data show.
Compare that to more affluent neighborhoods in south Charlotte or around Lake Norman, where less than 2% of homes are without internet.
Millen said that the gaps between families with and without access to devices and internet would only increase the longer the closures went on.
“The privileged have the ability to get on the computer anytime they want,” he said. “My kids can be curious anytime they want, but kids without access can’t do that. It takes marginalized families and creates a gap that gets harder to reconcile over time.”
For North, who worries about when her family’s free Spectrum plan will end, balancing the sudden, added responsibility of being a defacto teacher as well as being a parent can be stressful. She worries her children will fall behind in their time out of the classroom. North, who works in insurance and is paid by commission, said she’s seen a decline in her income even as she is able to do some work from home.
She’s open with her kids about any financial strains, and takes care to make sure they talk to her about how they feel. Their days always start with a journal entry so they can have a place to process their emotions, and she takes work calls between running lesson blocks. She keeps in touch with their teachers, who give her tips on what’s worked best for Victoria and Quincy in normal classroom times.
Quincy starts third grade in the fall, and Victoria will enter CMS as a high school student. North says she knows both are pivotal points in her children’s education, and she thinks about how being out of school has interrupted the progress the two have made.
“I don’t want to not continue down that path,” she said. “I worry about where this has put us at the end of day, and I wonder, ‘Am I continuously going to be playing catch up to everyone else?’”