Opinions

This fall, Alaska schools need a better plan for dealing with COVID-19

When schools closed for spring break back in March, few parents presumed that our kids would not go back. Now, as we stare down the barrel of summer into fall, it seems likely that — despite ample time for planning, outreach, and infrastructure development — the Anchorage School District will achieve little beyond its scattered emergency measures. These measures failed to provide students with an education, saddled parents with workloads that put our jobs at risk and left teachers with inadequate resources. Superintendent Deena Bishop must provide Anchorage families with a concrete roadmap for how the administration is planning to ensure quality education for our children and support for our families and teachers this fall.

When school went online in March, it was a quick fix. Parents went along with it. We were grateful to see familiar faces over Zoom. We downloaded a half-dozen apps and did our own office work after children went to bed. We swallowed decades of advice from pediatricians to limit screen time, and hollered at our kids from muted conference calls to get back to their reading. We scrolled past memes about how kids are now educated by wine-guzzling parents, but the joke was just tragic.

Despite having parents lucky enough to set up home offices, my child did not learn. Some students in her class we never saw again. A Brown University study shows that the sudden loss of just the last quarter equates to the loss of an entire academic year of progress. Online learning failed our students, parents and teachers in one fell swoop.

While this was happening, the ASD sent a stream of trite, almost blasé, emails. Many suggested that the hardship of going online was the cancellation of sports and dances. In one, Superintendent Bishop boasted of her new at-home office chair and watching Netflix. That we lost our jobs or were struggling to protect our jobs (while also full-time homeschooling) — or that social inequality ravages our nation and only school levels the playing field — seemed lost on our leadership.

As we reeled, online schooling became normalized. But through the worst of it, day cares containing our tiniest, germiest citizens remained open and the caregivers were kept safe. Campfire, the YMCA, and Boys and Girls Clubs stayed open, too. It can be done.

Why can we not give the same security to our teachers? Why are they not deserving of the resources and creative problem-solving as our day care providers, nurses and stock clerks? Yes, PPE and managing additional student space costs money. Big money. But the economic loss of income from parents-turned-homeschool teachers, the loss of career potential from future taxpayers, the loss of the system that allows us to hold mortgages and to patronize restaurants — is incalculably more.

The ASD cannot hinge online learning on ending with a vaccine, which is eons away. The internet was easy and convenient when chaos reigned. But it is not a solution for public school. The ASD must understand that — and make every decision based on that. Instead, the state contracts homeschooling programs to Florida. It buys apps that children cannot open without an attentive adult. It expects teachers to maintain student outcomes, but reduces them to a pixelated head on an old iPad.

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Times of crisis call for creativity and resourcefulness. Maybe this means pooled testing for kids at the door and lessons on mask etiquette. Maybe this means loosening the Common Core and doing more learning outside. Maybe it means hiring lower-level staff to split students into smaller groups or leasing space in business districts. Maybe it means some high-risk staff stay home and some parents homeschool their children. Private and public industry moved heaven and Earth to protect essential employees — we must do the same for our teachers. Schools are the nexus of our community, and the internet is no substitute. Teachers rank among the most essential members of our society — but they cannot do it from their dining room table.

Arran Forbes works in environmental public health and is currently completing her nursing degree at UAA. She is an alumna of the Anchorage School District.

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