THE INEQUALITY OF ELEMENTARY EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Peyton Bigora

Doodles by Cameron Fisher

The pandemic forced elementary educators to teach from a distance with most U.S. schools unable to return to normal. And the virtual approach to learning, though necessary, has put the many inequalities of the elementary education system glaringly into focus.

“It’s very, very difficult,” Leslie Gilman, an elementary teacher in Rhode Island said on social distance educating. “We’ve had to change all of our protocols, just our normal rituals and routines that we would normally use are now different.”

Coming Back & Opening Schools

Decisions whether or not to open schools are typically made at the local level, leaving school administrations confused on how to follow the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) recommendations or even execute the federal and state guidelines, many of which often contradict their district’s capabilities.

The CDC laid out four goals for combating the spread of the virus in August 2020:

• “Promoting behaviors that reduce COVID-19’s spread”

• “Maintaining healthy environments”

• “Maintaining healthy operations”

• “Preparing for when someone gets sick”

“Implementation should be guided by what is feasible, practical, acceptable and tailored to the needs of each community,” the CDC wrote on their website. They assert these regulations do not override federal, state or local safety measures established within schools, though.

Mrs. Gilman’s district in Middletown has grades K through five back entirely in-person, while grades six through 12 are in school two days a week and online for the other three.

The CDC provided a ranking of highest to lowest risk situations for administrators to refer to when reopening districts this past fall. The highest risk setting is entirely in person where face masks and social distancing are not required, cleaning is infrequent and students can move freely throughout the school. Lowest risk setting is an entirely online education.

Tara Hudson, a kindergarten teacher at Westhampton Beach Elementary on Long Island, NY, has a similar set-up to Mrs. Gilman’s district.

“It’s pretty normal, I would say,” Hudson said. “But besides the masks, the lack of movement is tough. And you try to fit it in and go outside more than ever, which is nice, but the last two weeks it’s rained. It’s really tough in that respect.”

Both Mrs. Gilman and Mrs. Hudson’s schools would be considered a mix between medium and higher risk by the CDC’s ranking; almost all students are attending class in person, but contact is as limited as possible. Being from relatively small school districts makes the task of social distancing somewhat easier than it has been in larger districts.

“Because we’re so small, we’re able to, at the moment, still utilize the cafeteria. But we’re using the cafeteria and the gymnasium as the cafeteria,” Mrs. Gilman explained. “They [the students] can take their masks off to eat, but they may not talk while they’re eating.”

“We’ve come up with some creative ways [to minimize contact],” Mrs. Hudson said of her kindergarten classroom. “They each have a few books that they look at and then we take them, they sit over the weekend and we spray them. They each have a bag of toys and, same thing, after a week we take them, spray them and let them sit. Rearrange, give them new bags. They have their own everything, they can never share. So that’s the odd thing.”

The Long Haul: March to June

The abrupt changes and restrictions that came in March highlighted many of the deeply ingrained inequalities within districts.

A student’s lack of resources, inconsistent access to Wi-Fi and absence of special education programs were all factors in decreasing quality of education, despite educators’ efforts to deliver.

Research conducted and analyzed by the Economic Policy Institute showed that a virtual education was only beneficial if students had continuous access to the internet and computers and if educators received “targeted training . . . for online instruction.”

Mrs. Gilman emphasized how many families in her area struggled with using both Zoom and Seesaw, another virtual learning platform, mainly because of limited internet connection. Fortunately for the Rhode Island teacher, the state governor made a deal with Verizon that gave all households access to Wi-Fi.

“Was it great Wi-Fi, no,” Gilman said. “Did it drop out all the time, sure. [But] the whole state had access to Wi-Fi, which was good.”

Her school also had the advantage of providing devices to every household to students, a privilege not every public school in America—or even Rhode Island—could provide.

Gilman said that other Rhode Island districts such as Providence, Woonsocket and Central Falls struggled to get enough devices and Wi-Fi for their students. “Even when we went back to school in September, many of them had higher numbers of COVID because they’re living in closer proximity.”

Mrs. Hudson’s school is another one of the few that fared well in terms of being able to provide students with learning supplies. But she spoke of teachers’ endeavors to stay in touch with such young students.

“We left that Friday and I didn’t know what a Google Bit was and now — totally proficient,” Mrs. Hudson said,laughing at feeling like a first-year teacher again, even after teaching kindergarten at the same district for over a decade. “Again, we literally didn’t know how to use the things we know now.”

As a mother herself, Mrs. Hudson could easily relate to the much-needed and hard-to-find balance between completing her own work and assisting her children with theirs.

“[Parents] just didn’t know what to do with themselves all day and how to help their kids because we were only on with them for maybe an hour a day at that point,” she continued, expanding on the difficulty of time-management within her students’ households.

Additional stress also came from the administration’s remiss approach to providing teachers with a set lesson plan for the online platform. The reality of closing again is one parents and educators alike do not want to see, but at least schools are more prepared and organized for this “what if” scenario. But in March, school staffs just needed to get by and protect the community’s health.

Above and Beyond

The socialization side of school is one of the only topics that could not be modified through Zoom and is something teachers continue to struggle with.

“I had a mom text me on the first day of school. She said ‘My daughter didn’t meet any new friends today,’” Mrs. Hudson recalled. She responded with, “’How would they at six feet apart?’”

Mrs. Hudson praised her students for their adaptability to the restrictions of a socially distant classroom. Many may not credit a five-year-old with the ability to keep a mask on or practice self-control around toys, but Mrs. Hudson continues to be impressed with her kindergarteners.

The much needed hands-on and in-person experiences surrounding special education have also proven to be an uphill battle. Mrs. Hudson spoke on the difficulties of not being able to pull children aside for smaller group work and the evident learning gap between kindergarten and first grade.

Mrs. Gilman had an especially difficult time as she worked specifically with nine IEP students last school year. Not only did she work with her co-teacher to create lesson plans for all 30 students in the class, she generated nine specialized, printed-out individual plans as well for her IEP students.

“Every Monday, I would drive around town and I delivered their materials for the week. And then I would Zoom with them throughout the week to help them as they needed it,” Mrs. Gilman said. She did this routine consistently for her students from March until the school year’s end.

But Mrs. Gilman didn’t stop there.

She went on to talk about one young student of hers in particular who has a social emotional goal in her IEP— something that can only truly be worked on in a social classroom setting.

“Her mom called me one day in tears saying ‘I can’t do this anymore, I just can’t do it.’ So I said, ‘What can I do to help you,’” Mrs. Gilman told HCAU. “And she said, ‘Can you go on a bike ride with her?’”

Thus began weekly bike rides to the beach where the two would sit, work on that week’s assignments and continue developing social skills.

“We would take a really nice walk, we would bring a backpack with her work in it, we would use a clipboard and we would sit outside on the beach or on the rocks,” Mrs. Gilman said. “And actually, to be honest, that was the best part of COVID. Those were the best lessons I ever had.”

So many flaws of the American education system were forced into view or worsened due to the pandemic, and while being back in person has allowed schools to better address them, there is much more work to be done.

Jordyn Habib