CENTRALIA, Wash. — At 8:01 p.m., on an unseasonably warm April evening, Lisa Grant hit refresh on her internet browser. Grant had been the superintendent of schools in this old coal and lumber town on the side of I-5, the major highway running the length of the west coast, for just 10 months. Tonight, she’d find out if she’d have the funding she needed to keep doing that job.

The Washington secretary of state’s website didn’t immediately update, so she hit refresh again, and again, until the early results of a vote on her school district’s property tax levy appeared on the screen.

Voters in the Centralia school district, it seemed, would again reject a ballot proposal to bring in $9.1 million over two years for their schools by renewing an existing property tax. It would be their third rejection in less than a year and a half. States and the federal government contribute some money to school budgets, but most are still dependent on local support to survive. Losing the revenue from the local property tax the first time had led the Centralia school board to issue pink slips to nearly 100 staff members and had even put the athletics program on the chopping block.

Managing an always-too-tight budget is just one of the challenges facing superintendents in small- and medium-size districts these days. Explosive political fights over masking, vaccines and critical race theory have resulted in superintendents in places as different as rural Oregon and suburban Maryland resigning or being forced out of their jobs under pressure from newly zealous school boards. About 25 percent of superintendents left their jobs last year, according to the American Association of School Administrators. So far, Grant has stayed.

On that anxious spring evening, Grant knew final results wouldn’t come in for at least a couple more days. But that night the proposition was failing by 23 votes. She took calls from the local newspaper and radio station, telling reporters, “We’re holding out hope.”

A former special education teacher who grew up in Oregon, Grant rarely considers a problem without mentioning how it affects students. She’s quick to list solutions and quick to laugh.

“She was brimming with enthusiasm and seemed so excited to be there,” said Lori Fast, former president of the Centralia school board, recalling Grant’s first interview. “We wanted to bottle up that energy and have her start the next day.”

But just over a year later, as she waited for the election results in April 2021, Grant was exhausted. There had been a pandemic, the district’s financial situation turned out to be as bad as Fast and other board members had warned and now she had to prepare for potentially more cuts. Before heading home, Grant phoned her husband — a pandemic routine — letting him know she was on her way. He cautiously asked, “What should I prepare for?”

“I remember feeling mixed emotions, such disappointment that we didn’t make it initially but knowing it was so close,” Grant said months later.

A 2019 study from the nonpartisan Albert Shanker Institute found only five states spend enough money to help students in high-poverty school districts achieve test scores that meet the national average; Washington ranked among the lowest spenders on that list. And while recent reforms here attempted to narrow the gulf between wealthy and low-income schools, critics question whether Washington’s complicated new funding formulas provide enough money to support all students.

“Washington … is so close and yet so far from the goal,” said Zahava Stadler, a special assistant for state funding and policy at the Education Trust, a national nonprofit that works to close opportunity gaps.

“We need to remember that there is no federal right to public education, but every single state constitution mentions a right to public schooling,” Stadler said. “It is the states that assigned themselves the responsibility of doing right and doing fairly by students, and it is appropriate and necessary to hold them to that.”

Related: “Kids who have less, need more” — The fight over school funding

Getting voter support in a cash-strapped, conservative-leaning town like Centralia is hard. The tax measure that kept Grant at work late in April 2021 first failed in February 2020, just a month after Grant accepted the job as superintendent of Centralia schools. It also failed in August 2020, a month after she’d started. And 13 months into a global pandemic, the prospect of once again banking the financial future of the town’s public school system on the will of its voters struck Grant as especially risky.

That April evening, Grant left the district complex feeling disappointed and frustrated. The two-building central office sits across the street from Centralia’s only middle school; nearby, towering Douglas firs dot the high school campus and a large boulder at the school entrance features a student’s painting of the school mascot, a tiger, wearing a face mask.

Centralia is home to about 18,000 residents, 3,400 of whom are students in the public schools. “Tiny Tigers,” whose presence is announced on lawn signs throughout the small city, attend the district’s five elementary schools. Congratulatory banners hanging from lampposts wave the senior portraits of each graduate in the Class of 2021. But in April, if history was any indication, all that school spirit wouldn’t necessarily translate to financial support.

Later that night, after exhausting her frustration on an exercise bike, Grant replayed two videos she had created to put on the school district’s social media pages. There was one to use if the tax proposal failed, the other if it somehow passed. She couldn’t remember dreaming when she finally let herself sleep. And not long after her alarm rang at 4:30 a.m., she fielded a call from a school board member angry about the vote.

“No matter what happens we’re going to move forward,” Grant remembered saying. “Everything has to move us in a positive direction, even if this isn’t a positive experience.”

The federal government moved quickly early in the pandemic to support K-12 schools, approving $13.2 billion in March 2020 to cover unanticipated costs. And by the spring of 2021, Congress had approved three separate rounds of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief fund, known to educators as ESSER, sending a grand total of nearly $190 billion hurtling toward classrooms that have not seen such federal largesse since 2009, during the Great Recession.

But the emergency funding is temporary — the last of it must be used by 2023 — and it won’t fix the long-term problems faced by school districts like Centralia, which were broke long before the pandemic started.

$190 billion — the total amount that Congress approved in three rounds of Covid relief funding for K-12 schools

In such places, a return to normal won’t be enough. Communities like Centralia, which has a small tax-base, can’t always count on local financial support, no matter how many Tiny Tiger signs dot the lawns. For these communities, what’s needed is the realization at the state or federal level that the amount of government money required to support schools — both before and potentially after the pandemic — is many times more than what has been spent so far.

On the local level, it’s not just a matter of voters’ willingness to tax themselves. Many homeowners have little sense for why the local schools always seem broke when they keep hearing about multimillion-dollar state budgets, which their property taxes already help support.

“The federal government, given the limited tools at its disposal, did the right thing” to send so much relief money, said Stadler, of the Education Trust. “But a short-term infusion of funds in districts that have been struggling with underinvestment for a long time is not going to be a silver bullet.”

Related: Rich schools get richer

In Centralia, as she waited for the final results of the election, Grant worried the federal boon could actually jeopardize “yes” votes for continuing a local tax.

“People think we have all this money to play with,” Grant said the morning after election night. “We have these federal dollars coming in but that’s not a recurring fund.”

Meanwhile, Centralia schools were short on staff, short on community trust and very short on money. In 2018, a teacher strike over demands for a salary hike delayed the start of school for a week. The previous superintendent, who eventually signed a union contract with hefty — and unaffordable — pay raises for teachers, left the central office mired in a culture of bullying and almost nonexistent communication with the public. And a new school board, swept into power in late 2019, discovered years of red ink baked into the district budget.

Although required by law to approve a balanced budget each year, the district forecast it would overspend its revenues by about $500,000 in 2021-22. The projected shortfall would eventually top $3.5 million in 2023-24, according to budget documents.

Centralia has also been losing a couple hundred students each year, at the cost of about $8,700 per kid. During the 2020-21 school year, Grant said, the district lost a staggering 476 students — some to a better-performing district nearby, some to homeschooling and others to virtual schools — for a net loss of about $4.2 million.

“That’s a school’s worth of funding,” Grant told a budget task force in early December.

She’d also learned in her first weeks on the job that the district had virtually no cash reserves to spend in an emergency. It had no long-term facilities plan to upgrade decaying infrastructure or to replace its aging fleet of buses, Grant said. In her estimation, it also had no sense of financial responsibility.

“One of the issues of why we lost the levy in the first place [was] people felt we gave too much to teachers [when] they went on strike,” she said. “The board was spending in the red every year. You can’t sustain that.”

Related: Should rich families be able to fundraise a better public school education for their kids?

Grant attempted to speak with her predecessor, Mark Davalos, to understand the budget mess. She never succeeded. (Davalos declined an interview request for this story.)

“It is what it is,” she said of the district’s past money troubles. “We can’t change that, but how do we move forward?”

The federal money will help Centralia and other small struggling districts for a year or two, but the pressure is on superintendents to spend it wisely, said Michael Griffith, a school finance expert with the Learning Policy Institute.

“If you spend like pre-pandemic, and don’t have additional results, that’s going to come back hard,” he said. “People come back and say, ‘We gave them all this money, and there was no return. There was no long-term improvement in schools.’”

The stakes aren’t lost on Grant.

In January 2020, during the hiring process, Grant appeared at a public interview and fielded an hour’s worth of questions about sex education, student poverty, the teachers’ union and property-tax levies. She touted her experience as a special education teacher, principal, central administrator and, most recently, superintendent of the neighboring Mossyrock school district.

Grant, who commuted to Mossyrock from her home in Centralia, easily rattled off facts about Washington’s school finance system and K-12 policy — a home-field advantage that distinguished her from the other finalist, a superintendent from rural Colorado.

“I can guarantee you that I can make mistakes,” she said of her leadership style, according to The Daily Chronicle. “I can also guarantee you that I will learn from them.”

The board announced her selection that same evening. By the time she finally stepped into the role six months later, on July 1, the world had turned upside down. She walked into the central administration building that day and set down a box of family photos, desk décor and positive affirmation posters next to the desk in her new office. Instead of unpacking, Grant spent her first day in a crash course on the district’s planning for the start of school in just two months.

The box remained on her office floor, unopened and collecting dust, for the next nine months.

As the third vote on a tax levy drew closer, in spring 2021, there seemed to be a chance for victory, but a slim one. Voters had sent mixed messages in the previous two elections: A whopping 69 percent doomed the first tax measure. The second failed by less than 1 percentage point.

Related: One of the fairest school funding models in the nation might be about to fail

Mark Dulin, owner of a local construction company and vice president of the Centralia Community Foundation, always supported the school levies. (His wife, Sarah, teaches math at Centralia High and their son graduated from the school.) Nonetheless, Dulin could see why so many voters gave the levy a thumbs-down before: They were still seething over the 2018 teacher strike.

“It was very contentious,” Dulin said. “People remain offended that the schools were closed for days. [The strike] zapped what used to be a really good community rally behind the schools.”

Centralia’s failure at the ballot box also revealed an obscure quirk in Washington’s school finance system.

In Centralia’s case, the doomed February 2020 election guaranteed the school district would collect neither its local property taxes nor the additional state support. The lost revenue forced Centralia to trim a fifth of its entire budget — right at the start of a global pandemic.

“I wish our school funding wasn’t contingent on whether the community passes a levy,” said Fast, who will step down from the school board this year. “It’s really unfair that’s how the system works. Folks already feel taxed enough.”

On a sunny spring morning in March 2021, the Dulins walked through the neighborhood just west of Centralia College to try to convince voters this particular tax — one that would support the town’s Tigers — was worth extending. They paged through a stack of papers with the names and addresses of past and likely voters, hoping to convince more people to vote in favor of the levy and flip the narrow loss from August.

Front door after front door, their knocks went unanswered. Sarah Dulin tucked campaign flyers into mailboxes or between screen doors.

In 2018, she had joined the teacher walkout to secure a better contract. It’s also the reason she doubted the likelihood of a win this time.

At the time, she thought most people supported the teachers. After the strike, she said, everyone suspected the union would “raid the levy” for even more raises.

At one home, with a dog yapping behind her, a mother with a student in middle school answered the door. She listened to the campaign pitch, then asked if voting ‘yes’ meant the district would fully reopen soon.

“That needed to happen a long time ago,” said the mother. And didn’t schools just get a lot of money from the feds, she asked.

“Well,” Dulin replied, “it’s complicated.”

Months before the door-to-door campaign — in August 2020 — a Lewis County workgroup of superintendents, pediatricians and public health officials started meeting to discuss how to safely reopen schools. One of their top concerns was student mental health.

“With suicidal ideation, it’s never been at this level” said Jennifer Polley, director of the Northwest Pediatric Center in Centralia and a member of the group. Diagnoses of anxiety, depression and conduct disorder — in which children exhibit aggressive or destructive behavior — had more than doubled, she said. She even heard from pediatricians that children as young as 8 were talking about suicide.

“I don’t think we even know the depth of it yet,” Polley said.

On March 15, 2021, almost exactly a year after ordering schools to close, Gov. Jay Inslee signed an emergency proclamation citing a youth mental health crisis and requiring all public schools to at least partially reopen. That same week, Centralia middle and high schools finally welcomed students back to campus.

The year without in-person learning fueled a lot of arguing between Gloria Delgado and her youngest son, a senior at Centralia High. He had already struggled with their sudden move to the small town from the San Francisco Bay area five years ago and he was still finding it difficult to make new friends or take an interest in school.

“The pandemic just exacerbated that,” Delgado said.

Balancing the mental health of 3,400 kids against the potential for outbreaks if schools reopened took a toll on Grant.

“My hair is greyer,” she said. “It’s a heavy responsibility, and one I don’t think any of us [superintendents] ever experienced to that degree … I know I wasn’t perfect at it.”

In Lewis County, nearly two-thirds of voters supported Donald Trump’s reelection bid, even as Washington state swung 58 percent in favor of Joe Biden. The county’s most prominent landmark — a billboard of Uncle Sam — greets drivers along I-5 with what the New York Times once described as “archconservative views in big block letters.” During the pandemic and Washington’s mask mandate, Uncle Sam warned that “edicts are the tools of dictators” and asked “What will the next Wuhan chimera virus be like?”

Although he found the prevalence of anti-mask sentiment and people questioning the reality of the virus frustrating, J.P. Anderson, the deputy director of Lewis County Public Health & Social Services, also sympathized with the community’s reaction to state orders and prolonged school closures.

“It’s defined largely by economic devastation that was caused by decisions made outside of Lewis County,” he said.

Related: Progress in the Deep South — Black students combat segregation, poverty and dwindling school funding

The first blow to the economy came in 2006, when the TransAlta Centralia Power Plant shuttered its coal mine, eliminating 600 top-paying jobs in Lewis County. The Great Recession soon followed, driving unemployment here to a peak of 15.4 percent in 2009.

Those losses affected Centralia’s schools too. In 2010, about 64 percent of students qualified for subsidized meals at school, a common gauge of household poverty. A decade later, 79 percent of students were considered low-income. As the schools’ finances floundered, its reputation suffered too, driving many families away: The district lost about 100 students a year, even before the pandemic.

“There’s real historical trauma,” Anderson said, explaining the local reaction to Covid mandates. “When [a decision] comes down and shuts down the economy and folks don’t have jobs any more, that’s suspect. That’s an enemy.”

On New Year’s Eve 2020, TransAlta closed one of its two coal-burning power plants in Centralia. By the time TransAlta extinguishes its second burner in 2025, a total of nearly 200 people will have lost their jobs.

Three weeks before winter break in 2020, kids in grades 4 to 6 returned to in-person classes. Grant was there to greet them, and make sure protocols were followed. Hands shaking — either from nerves or the December morning chill — Grant fumbled to catch the batteries falling out of a digital thermometer and onto the front lawn of Jefferson Lincoln Elementary. It was the second thermometer she had borrowed from the principal’s office. The first didn’t seem to work when Grant tested it on herself while walking toward a line of cars snaking around the entrance to the school.

Replacing the batteries, Grant hustled to join the school staff who approached each vehicle with a new routine: Cheerily welcome each student back to Jefferson Lincoln. Check their temperature. Collect a declaration that they had no symptoms of Covid-19.

One mother and her kids remained in their car, appearing confused by Grant’s request.

“You don’t speak Spanish, do you?” Grant asked the school staffer standing closest to her.

Earlier in the year, Grant had convened a reopening task force, hoping to bring all secondary students back to campus by early 2021. But negotiations with the teacher union had stalled.

“We have a ways to go,” Grant said, with a deep sigh.

The impasse joined a growing list of concerns for Grant, who struggled with how to address the mental health of both students and staff, language barriers with families who didn’t speak English at home and an uptick in the number of students experiencing homelessness.

Schools were also short on para-educators, having cut that budget by $2.1 million. At Jefferson Lincoln, that meant students in kindergarten through third grade got much needed one-on-one academic help, but older kids did not. And teachers supervised recess.

Parents, meanwhile, had started calling and emailing Grant to alert her to social media posts of teachers traveling for Thanksgiving or having parties at their homes.

Grant asked principals to remind teachers of the safety protocols — and common sense. (“You can’t post that you’re at Disneyland if you’re supposed to be working,” Grant said.) Part of the problem, she added, was that about half of Centralia’s teachers didn’t live in the city or even in the county.

“There’s certainly a feeling that we have staff who bring different beliefs and ideas than our community holds, and that played out a bit in that tension between getting kids back and having staff feel safe,” Grant said.

After the first bell rang that December morning, a straggling student raced past Grant and through the front doors.

“Whoa whoa whoa!” she called after him. “Where’s your mask?”

Cursing, the boy ran back into the thick Northwest fog to check if his ride had already left.

In January 2021, the district received about $1.1 million from the first round of federal relief money passed in early 2020. Within three months of that disbursement, Grant said, the fund was about to be exhausted.

The district was spending about $18,000 each month just to cover internet access for students still learning at home, Grant said. It paid $36,250 for extra desks to bring middle and high schoolers back on a four-day hybrid schedule. And some of the federal money had simply backfilled months’ worth of spending on disinfecting classrooms, temporary custodial staff and personal protective equipment.

As school returned from winter break, Grant noticed a deep sense of fatigue creeping across the district.

Related: New data—Even within the same district some wealthy schools get millions more than poor ones

She had hoped the two weeks away from school would have recharged central office staff, teachers — and herself. Grant relied more and more on her husband, a project superintendent in construction, to make it through each dreary, cold day. But she also wondered how employees managed without a spouse or support network, especially as a third wave of cases and extended lockdowns prevented many from spending the holidays with family.

“I have a lot of energy, and I love this work. But I know I’m tired,” Grant said. “And I can tell [my husband] that I’m not thinking as quickly as normal. I mean, we’re all fatigued, right?”

The April election finally arrived. From that night when Grant repeatedly refreshed the voter results page, it would be 10 days before she knew the fate of her town’s schools.

“I don’t like that we have to rely on it,” Grant said of the levy election. “In Washington, we’re a pretty regressive tax system … so that’s a heavier burden on our community and our taxpayers.” 

In the end, Centralia voters — by a margin of just 1 percent — approved the $9.1 million tax measure. Only 38 percent of registered voters cast a ballot, but it was enough. The district was also approved by the state to receive about $4.2 million from the second round of federal emergency funding and will need to apply to receive an additional $9.5 million from the third. If the Biden administration has its way, there will be more money down the line as well as incentives for states to commit to permanently increasing funding to high-poverty districts.

“I wish our school funding wasn’t contingent on whether the community passes a levy. It’s really unfair that’s how the system works. Folks already feel taxed enough.” Lisa Fast, outgoing president, Centralia School Board

Meanwhile, to get the estimated $4.2 million that Centralia schools were eligible for under the second Covid relief package, the district would first have to submit a recovery plan detailing how it would ensure seniors graduated on time, what it would spend the money on over summer and which interventions it would prioritize in fall 2021. Hiring new staff with the one-time money, which Grant said was “tempting,” could bind the district’s budget in the future.

“We have a lot of money. It’s a ton of money,” she said at the end of the 2020-21 school year. “If we misspend it and just go back to business as usual, legislators in the future will add tighter controls … That’s always the tension.”

Grant does not expect the extra state and federal money to last. It never has before.

“We won the support of the public, barely,” she said, “but that swing to trust us isn’t permanent. We have the opportunity to prove ourselves now.”

She doesn’t plan to waste her chance. Unless the federal and state governments commit to massive, ongoing increases in school funding, Grant knows that in two years, when this latest property tax expires, she’ll have to go back to Centralia voters with her hand out, asking again for their help.

This story about public school funding was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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When sports practices were abruptly canceled at his school on March 12, 2020, Michael Liao, then 17, started to worry how much the pandemic would affect his school – and particularly his upcoming theater performance. The next morning, he woke to an email announcing that in-person classes would be canceled for the foreseeable future.

By mid-April, the world had changed.

Jaden Huynh, then 16 and a sophomore at Arvada West High School in a suburb northwest of Denver, circled the dinner table plating goi — a Vietnamese salad — and spring rolls for her family’s Easter dinner and silently counted all the empty seats for cousins and extended relatives.

Colorado’s lockdown had been in place for months when Michael’s classmate, Mana Setayesh, also 17 at the time and a rising senior at Peak to Peak Charter School in Lafayette, sat stunned when her doctor told her a high school swimming star had come down with Covid-19 and could no longer attend college.

All three planned to graduate at the end of the 2020-21 school year. But as spring turned to summer and the pandemic raged, unabated, each quietly realized their senior year could end far differently than they ever expected. The months of disruption continued for Michael, Jaden, Mana and the other 3.7 million teenagers preparing for a triumphant final year of high school. And it gradually became clear to all of them: The timing of this global pandemic mattered.

“You don’t get a second chance at 12th grade,” Michael said. “This is it. This is the hand we were dealt.”

Stuck at home, these students saw their future threatened by an unpredictable and deadly virus that upended the economy and possibly their hopes for college. They watched as the police murder of an unarmed Black man reignited the country’s fight for racial and social justice. And they lived through perhaps the most divisive presidential battle in American history, culminating in rioters storming the Capitol in Washington, D.C. This chaotic year is now the foundation for these young people’s transition to adulthood.

Fall

In late October, as a cold front plunged Denver into near-freezing temperatures, Jaden walked through Arvada West on one of the two days each week she attended class in person as part of the school’s hybrid schedule.

Public health officials had opened an investigation into her school for a Covid-19 outbreak just days earlier, but the hybrid schedule remained, offering Jaden the chance to meet with her English teacher for help with an essay. But the conversation soon turned, as it often did with this teacher, to Jaden’s hope of to graduating early. The teenager left the classroom feeling her teacher was “super against” her plans.

“Graduating early during a pandemic is going to be incredibly difficult,” Jaden said. “It threw a huge fork into my plans.”

3.7 million teenagers were set to graduate from high school in spring 2021

She had just applied for a full-ride scholarship that she hoped would start her on the long path to becoming a neurosurgeon. The scholarship, from the Boettcher Foundation, would pay her way to one of 16 four-year universities in Colorado, something her family could never afford without taking on debt. (She previously wanted to specialize in trauma surgery but eventually decided to avoid “the terrible rates of PTSD” in that field and instead learn how to cut into people’s brains.)

“I’ve always been obsessed with the brain,” said Jaden.

Jaden bristled at the suggestion that she reconsider her early graduation goal. She was ready to start her adult life, one she hoped would allow her to support her family. Her father lost work during the pandemic, putting the family of 14 back on food stamps and Medicaid. Jaden is the third oldest in her family and dotes on her many younger siblings, some of whom are adopted.

Related: Pandemic reduces number of high school students taking dual enrollment courses

But learning from home was hard and her slipping grades threatened her plans.

“I set deadlines for myself, but it’s hard with how many people I live with,” Jaden said in early November. “You can’t ask teachers for a later due date. They’re slammed too.”

“I’m so tired of historical things happening.”

Michael Liao

She had enrolled in nine classes to earn all the necessary credits to graduate by May. Even with a personal hotspot from the school, Jaden grew frustrated with spotty Wi-Fi during remote classes. A chemistry teacher warned that missing Zoom classes, for any reason, would result in missing credit. Meeting these requirements became even harder isolated from the supports she used to rely on. Jaden, who identifies as Hispanic, Indigenous and Vietnamese, especially missed her mentors — including a favorite teacher who quit and moved across the country mid-year and the school counselor who had been available for drop-in meetings on campus before the pandemic.

Across the U.S., learning loss during the pandemic hit children living in poverty and students of color particularly hard. Early data suggested about a third of low-income, Black and Hispanic students did not regularly log into online instruction. But despite her own challenges with remote learning, Jaden was not ready to give up.

“When I commit to something, I commit, but I’m also bound to fail at times,” she said. On her college essays, she underscored the value of resilience. One began: “I’m really good at failing.”

“It was supposed to be a hook,” she explained. Rebounding from small failures, she believed, would lead to long-term success, no matter the hurdles in her way. “I really have to kick up and dig in and dig deep if I really want this,” she said.

About 20 minutes away, in Boulder, Mana was also thinking about college.

She had entered Peak to Peak, a college prep program, as a sixth grader and never doubted her plans to apply to top tier schools after graduation. But from her bedroom — decorated with new art she painted during lockdown and a puzzle poster of the periodic table of elements — Mana began rethinking her timing once she heard from friends in the Class of 2020.

“Your whole life builds up to this point, and then it’s just nonexistent.”

Mana Setayesh

They shared horror stories of dorm life during a pandemic. One remained stuck in her room alone, with only three other people on the same floor and classes completely online. Prepackaged food was delivered to another friend in a similar set up.

“They’re basically paying money to sit in a tiny square room, not allowed to come out and no one to talk to,” Mana said. “Wouldn’t it be better to stay at home with my family?”

Related: Opening the doors to elite public schools

Mana also refined her baking skills — she tested recipes from Iran, the country her parents had emigrated from — watched movies outdoors with friends and spent time on her bed scrolling through news reports about the record number of applications to, and record low acceptance rates at, elite colleges. The pandemic also prompted many incoming freshmen to delay their enrollment for a year; many universities stopped requiring the ACT or SAT for admission.

“You don’t want to get your hopes up, especially this year,” Mana said. After years of hard work aimed at being academically prepared for a school like Stanford University, her first choice, it suddenly felt like “there was just no way I was getting in.”

She knew she’d go to college somewhere. “I just started wondering what that would look like,” she said. “Would I enjoy freshman year? Should I defer it?”

Michael, the oldest son of Chinese immigrants, was also busy with college and scholarship applications. He debated whether to prioritize liberal arts schools, where he could major in the humanities, or more research-focused universities, which his dad preferred. At least the applications offered a distraction from what he described as the “collective national trauma” of the ongoing pandemic.

Of the 56 schools in the Boulder Valley School District, Peak to Peak, where he and Mana were enrolled, was the only one to remain fully remote for most grades last fall. Michael tried to find humor and happiness in the absurdity of it all. Of PE on Zoom — “Oh, cool, I get to watch myself work out now.” Of teachers’ (animal) pet cameos — “A shot of dopamine.”

Michael sat alone in his room one day in October and recorded a violin piece. “Ugh, this is terrible,” he thought as he submitted the clip. The final performance — clipped together by his teacher from student submissions — made him feel better.

“The comfort I took in helping to create a small ensemble piece, regardless of how terrible it was performed, was not insignificant,” Michael said. (Of his own contribution — “I’m not as bad as I thought.”)

He craved playing with others in real time though. During a second quarter break, the teacher offered optional Zoom sessions on Fridays, so students wouldn’t get rusty. Michael was the only one to show.

“This is not what anyone asked for, but we’re still here, and we’re all working to make sure it’s as pain free as it can be,” he said, determined at that point in the fall to maintain his optimism. “Seeing the kind of grace that teachers offer to students, it’s really heartening. It allows me to appreciate they’re in this too.”

Related: Nation’s skeletal school mental health network will be severely tested

But as winter came on, Michael began to feel lonely and had a harder time staying optimistic. In a national poll, nearly three-quarters of the more than 2,400 high schoolers surveyed reported a poor or declining sense of mental health, with disproportionately high numbers of female and Hispanic students and students experiencing food insecurity reporting such problems. More than a year into the pandemic, the Children’s Hospital Colorado eventually declared a pediatric mental health state of emergency, as youth behavioral visits to the medical system’s emergency rooms increased more than 70 percent over early 2019.

Winter

Mana struggled with health issues of her own.

Back in December 2019, as news first started trickling in from China about a new highly infectious virus, Mana had awoken with sudden hearing loss in her left ear — her doctors were unable to explain why.

Her mother was determined to help her find a solution. She consulted experts in the United States, at the Mayo Clinic and Dartmouth University, and expanded her search for information to specialists in Iran and the United Kingdom. None of the experts were forthcoming. After a particularly disappointing appointment — her mom burst into tears of frustration, Mana burst into laughter from exhaustion — the pair visited a fortune teller to lift their spirits. Surrounded by incense smoke and Buddhist statues, the medium told the teenager to expect good news on Dec. 13, 2020 (although she failed to predict the pandemic).

“I just want to get out, not in a bad way. I just need to explore and make up for lost time.”

Mana Setayesh

Even with all the distractions — the dramatic presidential election, a third wave of Covid cases after Thanksgiving — the date stayed in Mana’s mind throughout the winter. And two days before Dec. 13, in between errands she was running for her quarantined grandmother, an email arrived from Stanford University.

It was a rejection letter.

She did get some good news on Dec. 13 though. Her hearing had recovered to 60 percent, the most it likely would. Sitting with the fortune teller nearly a year earlier, it never crossed her mind that the “good news” predicted could be merely a partial recovery of her hearing. But she was OK with it.

Related: ‘Right now is not my time’: How Covid dimmed college prospects for students who need help most

“With college, I have no gut feeling of where I’m going,” she said a few days later. But the hearing issue, she added, made her feel less pressured about the rejection. “Being in the present and being isolated made me realize that Stanford was everyone else’s dream for me … I knew this wasn’t meant for me, but I had no idea what else was. That’s pretty scary.”

Still, at the moment she received the rejection note, her whole future seemed hazy. And after losing out on key senior milestones she had anticipated since sixth grade, Mana continued to wonder whether taking a gap year would be best.

“It’s a pretty big deal,” she said. “Your whole life builds up to this point, and then it’s just nonexistent.”

Michael started hearing from schools too and received early acceptances from three.

The congratulatory letters included an initial estimate of his financial aid awards, and the offer of full-ride scholarships from Centre College, a private liberal arts school in Kentucky, and the University of Texas-Dallas left Michael pleased with himself. “It’s a good mood booster, when you’re starting to feel burned out,” he said in December.

Even as record-setting warmth melted most of the snow during the holidays, the winter surge of coronavirus cases in Colorado kept Jaden at home for her 17th birthday, on New Year’s Day.

Jaden’s family typically celebrates with some Ecuadorian friends, who burn in effigy a representation of something bad (or annoying) from the old year. But this year, Jaden joined the family friends on Zoom for the midnight countdown.

Eating vanilla cake in her room, Jaden watched shaky video of the father of the other family hanging a large paper ball, surrounded by a cluster of crowns — a portrayal of the coronavirus — from a tree in the yard. At the stroke of midnight, in keeping with the Ecuadorian New Year tradition, the dad set fire to the effigy of Covid-19.

“I spent this entire year in a constant state of I-don’t-knows.”

Jaden Huynh

“That’s the entity that we would be better off without,” Jaden said in January 2021. “Maybe this year, we won’t get rid of [Covid] but we can handle it better after burning its spirit.”

A couple weeks later, her mom was sidelined by health issues, forcing Jaden to put school aside to help her family.

Jaden began to set her alarm for about 4:00 each morning. She’d spend a few pre-dawn hours on homework before waking her younger siblings and preparing breakfasts of cereal, pancakes or ramen noodles. Chores came next: mopping, sweeping, laundry and helping her 5-, 7- and 9-year-old siblings with homework each afternoon. At night, she cajoled the kids into showers before trying to tackle more homework and finally collapsing into bed herself before 11.

Joining many of her peers across the country, Jaden dutifully accepted the role of back-up parent, even as her frequent absences and missing assignments further threatened her early graduation plans.

“I was faced with having to step up for my family or for my education, and I chose my family,” Jaden said.

In early January, Michael got little work done as he watched the storming of the Capitol on TV with his family. Of the seemingly never-ending news cycle — “I’m so tired of historical things happening.”

But even when he avoided watching the news, he faced stress at home. His father had a chronic lung condition that made it risky to interact with anyone outside their family. In between driving his mother to work at the university and picking her up later in the day, Michael busied himself with chores at his family’s rental property: shoveling the driveway, fixing a broken toilet and shutting off all the outdoor plumbing so the pipes wouldn’t burst. He stayed on top of his academics, but slowly lost interest in things he usually enjoyed, like Dungeons & Dragons online. He skipped Among Us parties — an online game that requires players to guess the identity of an assassin — arranged by the student council.

“The burnout is real,” he said in February. “I haven’t really socialized ever since cases started rising again.”

One morning, he got a text message from a friend, asking him to visit the coffee shop where his friend worked. His parents had reservations, but Michael hadn’t seen his friend since July, during a physically distanced farewell for theater kids heading to college.

With hefty textbooks in his arms, Michael nervously walked into the café and looked for his friend; whose bright shock of red hair behind the counter was like a friendly wave. Michael cleared a seat nearby, ordered a small drink and lifted his mask to take quick sips while eavesdropping on the surrounding customers.

“It was mostly about basking in the presence of other people. There’s something about that ambience that I didn’t know I missed,” Michael said. He also got a hug — an unexpected embrace in the parking lot — “which is wild, considering I don’t do that very often, even in normal times.”

The isolation, he realized later, had changed him: “I have been incredibly touch-starved.”

Related: PROOF POINTS: Depression and anxiety rise among Chinese teens during coronavirus pandemic

The restrictions of the pandemic had a significant impact on young people, who rely heavily on social connections for emotional support, according to a March 2021 survey from the University of Michigan’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital. About three quarters of the parents who responded said the pandemic had a negative impact on their teens’ ability to interact with friends. That held true for Michael, but therapy helped him understand the importance of human relationships.

“I find it hard to be vulnerable, and this simple act of giving a hug recognizes that person means something to you.” He’d been, he realized, “a bit of a coward in that department — until Covid hit.”

Spring

For Jaden, the anxiety continued into April, as she waited to learn if she had won the full-ride scholarship. Then, days after Colorado opened vaccine eligibility to anyone 16 or older, both her mom and dad tested positive for Covid. The diagnosis meant Jaden was back to playing back-up mom.

“I can’t afford to be a kid anymore,” she said. “I have obligations and people I need to support. I don’t have time to hang out with friends or go to a dance.”

“I was faced with having to step up for my family or for my education, and I chose my family.”

Jaden Huynh

After her parents’ recovery, Jaden sat on her bed and tried to complete yet another overdue English essay. The constant patter of her younger sister running up and down the stairs — relaying reminders from their mom that Jaden needed to scrub the kitchen counters — tested her patience and concentration.

By that point, she had considered staying at a friend’s house for some peace and quiet. Her mother rejected the request and Jaden began to lose faith that she could ever improve her failing grades. That morning, she’d had enough.

“I couldn’t stop yelling,” she said. “I needed to just be left alone. I felt so sick. I could never choose school over family, but school used to be everything to me.”

Mana and her parents, meanwhile, were fully vaccinated by April. In between hugging friends for the first time in a year and planning for actual college visits, Mana allowed herself to start imagining a future that looked more like the one she’d had in mind for years.

The arrival of acceptance letters from five schools — mostly her backup choices — made that seem even more likely.

“I want to do every single thing I can possibly do,” Mana said. “I just want to get out, not in a bad way. I just need to explore and make up for lost time.”

And as her goal of going to college has held steady, her list of what she hopes to accomplish during her first year has changed. “It was never on my freshman bucket list to visit every restaurant in town,” Mana said. “Now I’m going try every single one that sounds remotely good.”

As rained soaked the Boulder Valley in spring, the future began to look less grim. Mana got to ditch the weather — and Zoom — for in-person college visits at her three preferred schools in California. Peak to Peak announced tentative plans for an actual prom — the state would limit students to dancing in pods of 10 people or less — and an outdoor graduation ceremony.

At her desk, sitting among Harry Potter books and souvenirs from previous travels with her parents, Mana created a balance sheet to account for her final year of high school. Among the losses: Volleyball tournaments. Homecoming. A final ski season with her dad. Gains: Increased independence. A stronger sense of self. More time with her family.

“We had meals together every single day. We used to only do that on weekends,” Mana said. “It’s been a blessing especially because it’s my last year at home. A lot of times, most students pack their last year and it’s so busy and hectic, they lose out on that.”

By the final quarter of school, as vaccines allowed Peak to Peak to open its doors to in-person learning again, Michael’s father also got his first shot and traveled to California to visit with Michael’s older sister. While he was out of town, Michael’s mother decided to send Michael and his brothers back to class.

“We just show up, I open my computer and do what I would be doing at home,” Michael said of that first week. “I haven’t seen someone sit next to me for a very long time. It’s glorious.”

Related: Schools use art to help kids through trauma

But after dinner one evening, as he was about to step into the shower, Michael’s phone rang. It was his father, demanding to know why he went back to school. Halfway undressed, Michael told him to figure it out with his mom, and by the time he showered and dressed again, the mandate was set: He’d finish the year entirely from home.

Disheartened, but understanding, Michael had one lifeline that his brothers didn’t: Theater rehearsals had started again and he was allowed to go.

“You don’t get a second chance at 12th grade.”

Michael Liao

For a two-night, outdoor performance of “Matilda,” the cast started each rehearsal in a big circle.

Tongue twisters in a British accent made Michael chuckle during the vocal warmups, and transparent face masks made it easier to see his fellow actors’ smiles.

Before the closing performance, he and the other seniors gathered for the “tradition of shroses” — each held a bundle of fake roses for each show they had joined since freshman year. Michael, with “a dinky four flowers,” fought back tears as his castmates gushed about their adopted family.

“They’re all kinda wacky, and I mean that in the most endearing way. We’re all a group of misfits,” he said. “I wish I had joined theater sooner.”

Getting back to theater was “a benchmark” for Michael. “Before, I was unhappy … At least now I’m sad with friends,” he joked.

Graduation

By May, when more than 40 percent of Coloradans had received their full vaccinations, Jaden was still waiting for a shot. But she had other priorities in mind: With the support and understanding of her teachers, who bent a few rules — and some wrangling by her college counselor — Jaden got the go-ahead to finish her remaining credits over the summer and graduate a year early as planned. The scholarship foundation also announced her as a full finalist, solidifying her intent to attend the University of Colorado Denver this fall.

The 17-year-old didn’t walk with seniors at Arvada West, although she had never really expected to don a cap and gown to mark the end of her time in high school. But while she didn’t mind ditching the ceremony, Jaden was sorry she’d missed the last chance to see her teachers and counselors; she knew she wouldn’t have reached the finish line without them.

“I spent this entire year in a constant state of I-don’t-knows,” she said. “Obstacles were thrown at me left and right, and I took on more responsibility than I thought I could bear.”

Jaden said surviving the year wasn’t easy, but believes it was the perfect preparation for an early entry into college. She no longer fears asking for help.

“Putting a lot on yourself is super difficult, but not impossible, if you involve other people,” Jaden said. “The more I rely on others, the less difficult a load becomes.”

Early in May, Mana sat on the living room couch and opened her phone, expecting bad news. “Let’s just open them,” she told her mother of the application status updates from the two Ivy League schools at the top of her list. “If I didn’t get in, it’s fine. Let’s move on.”

She got in.

“I was like, ‘Waiiiiiit a second. Hold on. Did I get in? I don’t know if this is true!’” Mana recalled. “We called my dad over and he was like, ‘What! You got in?’ It was just a lot of excitement and surprise and so much after an application cycle that has been so insane and crazy.”

Mana plans to study biotechnology at Cornell University and hopes to pursue it further in graduate school.

She recently picked up her diploma from Peak to Peak and spent time visiting with teachers she hadn’t seen in a year and others she just hadn’t had the chance to say goodbye to before the school year ended for seniors on May 19.

“No one has to be as flexible or as overcoming or as persevering as we have,” Mana said of her graduating class, both at Peak to Peak and nationally.

Michael, meanwhile, will soon pack his bags to attend Centre College in Kentucky.

He’s worried about leaving his family, especially with anti-Asian hate crimes happening across the country. But he’s also ready. On the final night of “Matilda,” a sudden downpour moved the performance inside. The cast was undaunted and “played their damn hardest.”

“Life is mostly what you make of it and how you react to it,” Michael said. “As much as all of us would hope to erase the pandemic, we can’t. We all tried our best, and we’re getting close to the end, and that’s all really anyone can ask of us.”

This story about high school seniors was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

The post A school year like no other: The class of 2021 played ‘the hand we were dealt’ appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

This story about trusted adults was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter 

AURORA, Colorado — When 12-year-old Jayla heard a friend had died by suicide during the pandemic, she was terribly upset. The loss was bad enough, but Jayla carried an extra weight. 

“He told me he was having a bad day earlier that week and I didn’t ask him why. I told myself it was my fault because if I wasn’t so fixated on myself and if I would have called him to check up on him, he would still be here,” she said. She was in a “bad place.” 

While no one person or factor causes suicide, guilt is a common reaction among family and friends, experts say.

After her friend’s death, Jayla began having anxiety attacks andfoundher thoughts spiraling out of control. And she couldn’t really turn to anyone at home. “My mom works a lot and my dad really isn’t around, so I really don’t have somebody to talk to. And I don’t want to stress my grandma, she’s too old to worry about what I’m doing.” 

She said having someone at school who could help was “really, really important.” And she knew exactly whom to turn to. 

Jayla goes to Columbia Middle School in Aurora, Colorado, a school that doesn’t just have one counselor on hand, but a full mental health team — plus teachers who have received training in how to respond to mental health issues. The school also offers an array of specialized online programs and curricula at every grade level. These supports were paid for with funding the community had approved for such programs, even before the pandemic made children’s mental health a top national concern.  

As schools across the country bring back thousands of students reeling from unprecedented mental health challenges, Aurora offers some lessons and evidence-based strategies they could look to in devising support. One of the district’s key strategies doesn’t cost any money at all: letting every student choose a “trusted adult.”

At the beginning of each semester, Jayla’s school sends every child a survey with photos of every adult in the building, asking the kids to name someone who they feel they can confide in, who cares for them as a person and who will find them the support they need.

Related: Nation’s skeletal school mental health network will be severely tested

Jayla’s trusted adult happened to be one of her school counselors, Katie Humphrey; during hallway conversation Jayla confided her guilt and anxiety over her friend’s suicide to Humphrey. The counselor then checked in on her every day to ask how she was doing and scheduled visits in her office. “That really helped because I was not able to talk about him without crying,” Jayla said. Talking with Humphrey helped Jayla understand the suicide wasn’t her fault; without that heavy burden of guilt, she’s now able to focus more on her school work. “If it wasn’t for them asking me if I was OK and checking on me mental-health wise, I don’t think I would be in the place I am now.”

“Before we were just winging it. Now we have some signs to look for.”

Jessica Hyatt, a receptionist at Columbia Middle School

Even before the pandemic, one in five children in the U.S. showed signs or symptoms of a mental health disorder in any given year, a situation experts call a “silent epidemic.” Now, new studies warn of the pandemic’s potentially “debilitating effects” on children’s psychological, developmental and educational progress as anxiety, depression and loneliness increased over the last year. Federal and state governments have allocated extra money for mental health services and school districts across the country are scrambling to beef up supports. 

But communities that had already prioritized mental health were in a better position to deal with the unique challenges of the pandemic. In Aurora, Superintendent Rico Munn said the focus on mental health started years ago, to deal with an array of challenges schools faced there.

“We had some of the highest expulsion rates in the state. We had one of the lowest graduation rates in the state. And we had a whole host of indicators that we were not connecting with our students in the right way,” he said. 

District leaders decided the solution was to form better relationships with students. “Mental health supports play very much into that. Knowing who they are, what challenges they face and what supports they need, is fundamental to the way we think about our work,” he said.

The new focus has paid off. Since he started as superintendent in 2013, Aurora schools have seen a 23 point increase in graduation rates, from 56 percent in his first year to 79 percent in 2019, and a 55 percent decrease in police referrals, from 489 in 2013 to 220 in 2019 — improvements educators in Aurora say are a direct result of their work to connect with kids and better address students’ mental health needs. And while additional funding has been a significant factor in the district’s success, Munn said any district could replicate some of the simple strategies used by APS schools. 

“We were very actively involved in this work before we got the money. The money allowed us to go to a deeper level,” he said.

In November 2018, the school district in Aurora, a suburb 10 miles east of Denver, asked the community to increase local property taxes to help schools hire more teachers, pay for seatbelts in buses and provide a big boost to the district’s mental health program. The owner of a house worth $100,000 would pay approximately 100 dollars more each year. 

Aurora isn’t a wealthy community, but 60 percent voters supported the tax increase. The reasons for the support were varied: One teacher said they had been asking for more mental health services for years; a school administrator said the shooting in a Parkland, Florida earlier that year was fresh in voters’ minds; a principal suggested that the shooting in a local cinema five years prior, which killed 12 people and injured 70, still haunted the community. A parent believed people were motivated by memories of the 1999 Columbine high school shooting, which happened a half hour drive away. 

The influx of money — $35 million annually, 40 percent of which was earmarked for mental health programs — allowed district leaders to hire more than 100 additional mental health professionals; contract with private health care organizations for specialized treatment; provide training and mental health supports for educators and expand mental health programming for all children.

Before the tax hike, just 10 percent of elementary school children had access to a mental health professional, now there’s at least one mental health care professional in every school building, and in some cases a team with multiple counselors, social workers and psychologists. At every middle and high school in Aurora, the ratio of mental health providers to students is 1:250. The national average ratio of school counselors to students, by contrast, is 1:430. 

Related: How one school is coping with mental health — Social workers delivering technology, food and counseling to kids at home, and open office hours all day — even when school is out

Katie Lafave, a school psychologist at the middle school, said that before the district received the additional funding, her work was purely reactive. “It was putting out fires a lot.” Now, she can do preventive work for all kids, plus spend time making sure her building has appropriate reading materials, designated calm spaces, stress balls and fidget toys. 

“If it wasn’t for them asking me if I was OK and checking on me mental-health wise, I don’t think I would be in the place I am now.” 

Jayla, 12

Previously, social worker Dawn Glassman would split her time between two schools. “I wasn’t able to be consistent,” she said. Now, she’s at just one high school — APS Avenues — and is part of a team consisting of four social workers, two counselors and an outside therapist. The ratio of staff to students is 1 to 44. “Honestly, it’s unheard of,” she laughs. Andrew Springsteen, a counselor at Rangeview High School said he used to have a case load of over 550 students, now it’s half that. In his school of 2,000 kids, there are 10 mental health professionals. “Before I would never have been able to actually introduce myself and have a one-on-one personal conversation with every student,” Springsteen said. Now, he can and does.

Glassman said being part of a mental health team enables counselors, social workers and therapists to lean on and learn from one another, just as teachers do.“We meet regularly, we brainstorm solutions, we do case reviews. That really increases the quality of care and services that we provide for our students,” she said. 

In Columbia Middle School’s student support center, six students sit in a little circle, talking about what they call “small and big world problems.” Signs with cheery messages like “Shine Bright!” and “All About That HUG Life,” decorate the walls of the center, a repurposed administration space with six smaller offices for private conversations surrounding the main room. The kids in the circle offer their reasons for their first visit to the center: Taylor stopped by for a quiet space when her classmates were being “really annoying.” Sofia started to come by when she was stressed about getting good grades and was ready to “explode on somebody.” And Rose spoke to a counselor when her long-time friend began to withdraw.

The middle schoolers say they don’t feel any stigma about speaking to a counselor. “It’s scary at first talking to someone when you never have before, but it is definitely worth it,” said Rose. 

During the pandemic, families have faced hunger, homelessness, layoffs and health challenges. They may not have the time or even the words to talk about mental health. Sometimes the adults at home are the cause of the stress. Just 60 percent of children in the district’s Covid student survey this year agreed that “home is a safe place.”

The students at the center, like many kids, say that some grownups might think they’re being lazy if they don’t complete school work. “They don’t understand that some kids can get depressed, some kids can have anxiety. It’s like something that happens in real life,” said Rose. Or as Taylor said, “Even parents say things like ‘What do you have to be stressed out about? You don’t pay the bills.’ And that kind of sucks.” 

Taylor said her parents are divorced but still live in the same town house. “They argue a lot because of the rent, the light bill, the water bill and everything. I feel stressed out because my mom cries and then it just makes me want to cry,” she said.

During those moments, she sits in her bedroom and texts her school counselors.

Related: Parents fighting, teachers crying — Grownup stress is hitting kids hard

The district has tried to normalize the concept of asking for mental health support, both for children and parents. “I tell our students, it’s like tutoring. If you need help in math, you go get a tutor. You go to your teacher for help. We’re kind of your tutors for mental health,” said Humphrey, who counsels seventh graders.

Sofia Kent, the school social worker at Montview Elementary School, saidwhen the topic of mental health is presented in a very open, nonjudgmental manner it makes a big difference. “If we say it in a way that feels shameful or we kind of shy away from it, then students pick up on that.” 

Mental health staff try to be visible, whether they’re giving high fives to kids when the buses arrive, sitting in on academic classes, or doing home visits, during or after school. They also organize fun activities like dunk tanks, dance battles and games. Jordan Glaude, a social worker at Elkhart Elementary, said just being around helps normalize her role. “The label ‘social worker’ can scare a lot of our parents.” But she said the stigma is reduced when they see her interacting with other school staff every day. 

Jennifer Rice, a social worker at Crossroads Transition Center, said she has open conversations early on with any parent who seems hesitant. “I think the biggest thing [they’re worried about] is ‘I’m not crazy.’ Or ‘my kid isn’t crazy.’ And so we just talk about it. What are your worries about it? What has you concerned about receiving these services? And then let’s move forward.” 

Jessica O’Muireadhaigh, who is in charge of mental health for the district, said the efforts are working. She said there has been an increase in the number of suicide assessments in the district this year, which she sees as a positive. “That’s somebody saying ‘Help,’ right? They know where to go. The staff know what to look for. They’re catching it and having conversations and providing supports.” 

For kids who need more individualized, intensive support, the district has contracted with two medical institutions — Aurora Mental Health and HealthONE — to provide free mental health support for students. Twice a week, children and families can see their therapist in an office in the school building so they don’t have to travel. 

O’Muireadhaigh said the partnerships mean “families aren’t left trying to navigate a complicated system.” 

Liam, 11, is not yet back in school in person because he suffers from several health conditions, including acompromisedimmune system. He’s very isolated, so counselor Jay Brown, a sixth grade counselor, checks in on him weekly via Zoom to help provide a connection to school. He’s also Liam’s trusted adult. 

Brown keeps an eye out for any changes in Liam’s moods. “It can start as ‘I’m a little bit sad,’ but that could certainly change and get more severe and become more of a depression,” he said. 

On a recent visit, they talked about gaming club, exchanged recommendations on TV shows to watch and Liam vented about his little sister. “Everysinglenight at 8, when she’s going to bed, she yells. Loudly,” he complained. “It’s her bed time routine.” “Do you yell back?” asked Brown. “Nah, I just turn my TV waaaaay up.”

Liam said, in passing, that he might need more surgery this summer. He and Brown talked about how he feels. “OK,” Liam said matter of factly. “I’ve had many surgeries already.” Brown asked whether the Chromebook he dropped off is working; he made a note to check with Liam’s mother about the visit. But he was pleased Liam seemed in good spirits. 

Mental health staff say casual conversations with children — in hallways, during lunch time, at the bus stop, online — are key to building trust and relationships. Even without multiple counselors on hand, they say schools can build these kinds of relationships if every adult in the building is taught how to help support children’s mental health. 

Every year, all Aurora teachers and staff are required to receive training on how to recognize the signs a student might be struggling and how to refer the student for extra help. Certified trainers from the District’s mental health team of 43 offer the training sessions. In addition, before the 2020-21 school year, all teachers and staff were also required to take multiple sessions on how to give support to students in the classroom. The district also provides specialized training for certain teachers and staff members on inclusive environments, brain development and suicide and crisis prevention and response. 

Dawn Ganaway, a middle school counselor at Columbia, said even when staffed at the recommended ratios, there is no way to meet the needs of kids with severe issues while trying to create relationships with a caseload of hundreds of students. “And so we slowly started to change the thinking [to realizing] that we’re all in this together. They’re all our kids, and that everyone has a responsibility to make sure that our kids feel safe,” she said. 

Jessica Hyatt, Columbia Middle School’s receptionist, recently joined a three-hour session on how to recognize symptoms of suicidality and de-escalate behavior. “Before we were just winging it,” she said. “Now we have some signs to look for.” 

Hyatt said she’s learned that she plays a crucial role in helping students who have been sent to the main office stay calm. She’s also learned how to better read children. “There’s some that come just completely shut down and they don’t even look me in the eye. Then I’ll back off. Others seem to want to engage. And then I’ll say, ‘Can I get you some water?’ or ‘Is there anything that you need?’” 

Timothy Hall, a custodian, said he’s started asking kids how their day is going. “Sometimes they’ll let you in, sometimes they won’t,” he said. Either way, he sees his role as an extra pair of eyes in the building. “It’s important to keep notice of kids, to relay information to counselors.” 

Craig Lyle, Columbia Middle School’s principal, said that buy-in for the district’s mental health initiatives is something he looks for when hiring all new staff. “I say, ‘I know you’re a math teacher and we’ll talk about core curriculum and we’ll talk about how to teach math,” he said. “But math is a highly stressful class. And so when students become upset, when students shut down, how do you respond?’ So that is a very, very specific question we ask teachers in the interview process.”

Humphrey, the seventh grade counselor, said it’s now a point of pride to be named as a child’s trusted adult. “Our teachers take it very seriously when they say so-and-so’s named me a trusted adult.” The process also identifies kids who don’t feel connected, which sets off some soul-searching among the adults as they try to form connections with those children. “Like, why is this student not finding someone that they feel like they can trust?” said Humphrey.

O’Muireadhaigh said she’s proud that 89 percent of the students responding to a 2020-21 district survey said they felt connected to at least one adult in their school during the pandemic, an increase of 13 percentage points over the previous year. And 83 percent agreed with the statement, “I know where to get support if I need help with my feelings.” 

“That’s huge because that’s the number one protective factor that’s going to help kids feel connected and safe and a sense of belonging in school,” she said.

Research suggests there are benefits to investments in mental health services, including improved attendance, better test scores and higher graduation rates as well as lower rates of suspensions and expulsions. And that having mental health providers improves outcomes for students and can improve overall school safety.

Research suggests there are benefits to investments in mental health services, including improved attendance, better test scores and higher graduation rates as well as lower rates of suspensions and expulsions. And that having mental health providers improves outcomes for students and can improve overall school safety.

This year, Superintendent Munn said it’s hard to show benefits quantitively because there is a “dearth of data.” The school year was so atypical, traditional measures such as attendance, behavior and course completion are skewed. “It doesn’t exist or it doesn’t make any sense because of the pandemic,” he said.  

But counselors said they have data for their individual schools showing fewer children are self-harming or being suspended. Some said their work is successful because the atmosphere in their buildings is noticeably calmer, others pointed to the fact their students never miss a mental health support group meeting — even though it’s voluntary. Still others said the difference is obvious in the connections they see every day. “There’s just a constant flow of students wanting to come say hi or what’s upsetting them, what’s making them happy,” said Kent, the social worker at Montview Elementary. 

Aurora administrators said the pandemic’s impact on kids and families has given them even more to do — hire more staff, collect more data, train more teachers. Superintendent Munn said the pandemic disrupted a lot of the district’s plans and the mental health team is trying to get back on track. There are groups working to vet different social and emotional curricula, to infuse discussions about how to cope with feelings and trauma into academic classes, ensure the lesson plans are culturally responsive and create a community mental health advisory group. 

Lyle, the principal at Columbia Middle School, said when he started as a teacher in the district 20 years ago, mental health “wasn’t something you talked about.” If students were having trouble, they were either sent home or isolated in a room, he said. “This year especially, it’s not an afterthought,” he said. “It’s the first thing we think about.” 

Lyle said the issues schools must deal with before and after Covid are essentially the same —anxiety, homelessness, grief, trauma — but the volume and intensity of students and families needing help has increased significantly. 

Counselors, like Jennifer Rice, say they feel grateful for the foundation that was already in place in the district. “So when Covid hit, it did not feel as heavy as it could have and as it probably did in other districts,” she said. 

If you or someone you know is having suicidal thoughts, you can call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), or reach the Crisis Text Line by texting HELLO to 741741

This story about trusted adults was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

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When Marcus Jake, 18, first approached his teacher Guila Curley about taking her “college success” class last fall, she was hesitant. “Are you sure you want to do that?” she recalled thinking.

Jake, then a junior at Newcomb High School in Newcomb, New Mexico, was a good student, but Curley worried because the college-level class was online. Jake, who, like Curley, is Navajo, lived up a remote mountain road with no cell phone service.

Newcomb High School is a public school located in the Navajo Nation, around 70 miles south of the Four Corners Monument where New Mexico meets Arizona, Colorado and Utah, in a school district that spans almost 3,000 square miles. In addition to Newcomb itself, the high school serves seven different Navajo communities, the farthest of which is around 30 miles away, although some students travel even farther to get to the school. All of the 266 students enrolled at the high school are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, a federal measure of poverty.

Curley told Jake she’d love to have him in the class, which covered topics such as study skills, but he needed to promise to upload his assignments every week and come to the live Zoom session every Monday morning. Jake agreed. “I wanted to take [the class] just to like, push myself and to further my education, and also to get ready for college,” he said.

But halfway through the semester, Jake was failing. The house he lives in with his grandparents has no cell service. To get online, he drove half a mile down a rocky dirt road and tried logging in via a school-provided hotspot from the cab of his truck. But the connection was slow and Jake quickly grew frustrated.

Curley, Newcomb High’s college and career readiness coordinator, saw many stories like this in the past year. When education went online, she struggled to get into contact with students and help them meet college application and financial aid deadlines. College became less of a priority for students who were struggling just to log into class or who were worried about having their basic needs met, she said.

“We just weren’t prepared to handle the loss of the school as an Internet hub”

Guila Curley, college and career readiness coordinator, Newcomb High School

Prior to the pandemic Curley estimated that up to 40 percent of the school’s graduates enrolled in college. Curley, who attended the high school where she now teaches, said that number dropped significantly for both fall 2020 and fall 2021, as students struggled not only to get online but, in some cases, watched as their relatives lost jobs or became sick or even died from the coronavirus. Fears of contracting the virus on college campuses also kept some students from applying.

“We were all trying to survive, whether that was physically trying to not catch Covid, or mentally and emotionally,” Curley said. “We were just trying to get through.”

National figures tell a similar tale. Even before the pandemic, American Indian and Alaska Native students had the highest high school dropout rate and lowest college enrollment rate of any U.S. racial group. In 2018, just 24 percent of Native Americans age 18 to 24 were enrolled in college, compared to 41 percent of the overall population in that age group, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Then, in fall 2020, the number of Native students attending college for the first time fell by nearly a quarter, compared with a 13 percent drop for all first-year, first-time students, according to the National Student Clearinghouse. Experts worry about the long-term economic impact on Native communities if students continue to forgo college in large numbers.

“It is going to affect our tribal economies, it’s going to affect the health and wellness … of our tribal people,” said Diana Cournoyer, executive director of the nonprofit National Indian Education Association and a member of the Oglala Sioux tribe. Native college graduates often come back to their communities and work in schools and health clinics, which had trouble attracting enough people to fill these essential jobs even before this past year, she said. 

But while the pandemic exacerbated the barriers that Native students already faced in getting through high school and into college, it also demonstrated the lengths that some students, and their teachers, will go to learn with the hope of improving their lives and those of their families.

Related: Schools bar Native students from wearing traditional regalia at graduation

As soon as Covid hit in March 2020, Curley recognized how difficult it would be for her school district to transition to remote learning. She estimated that only around 10 to 15 percent of her students had internet at home. “We just weren’t prepared to handle the loss of the school as an internet hub,” she said.  

She spent last April trying to secure technology for students taking Advanced Placement exams. When hotspots and laptops weren’t available because of supply chain issues, the school broadcast its WiFi to the parking lot so kids could log on to take the AP tests on their phones while sitting in their cars. Early in the pandemic, school staff also printed out homework packets and delivered them by bus, or asked students to come to school once a week to pick them up. Some educators also dropped off packets at home for students who lacked transportation, said Bill McLaughlin, the Newcomb High School principal.

Curley said many of her best students failed dual enrollment classes at the local community college when it abruptly transitioned to remote learning. She received an alert from the college letting her know that she might want to check on a student who didn’t have electricity at home. That’s not uncommon: More than a quarter of the 55,000 homes in the Navajo Nation lack electricity. “What do you want me to do?” Curley recalled thinking. “I can’t give her electricity, but you can give her an extension.”

“At the end of the day, who cares about college if you don’t care about living?”

Guila Curley, college and career readiness coordinator, Newcomb High School

Many students used the school shutdown to spend more time working. Last fall, McLaughlin and other staff members started driving to the nearest McDonald’s, more than 30 miles away, to drop off homework packets because so many students got jobs there. “We would go through the drive thru,” McLaughlin said.

Eighteen-year-old Colby Benally, who is headed to Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, in the fall, summed up his senior year at Newcomb succinctly. “It sucked,” he said, a sentiment shared by many of his peers. “We’re just trying to do our best to get through today without getting the symptoms of Covid.”

Benally said that most of his close friends aren’t thinking about college. “To them, it’s always been actually going to work right after high school,” he said.

Related: How one Minnesota university more than doubled its Native student graduation rate

Curley said the pandemic hampered her ability to keep students on task when it came to applying for college. Normally, she would have ensured that every graduating senior had, at a minimum, applied to the local community college to preserve the option of going to school in the fall. But this year, as she struggled to get in touch with students, “a lot fell on the kids’ shoulders,” she said. Fewer applied to college this spring; some of the students from last year’s graduating class who had applied, didn’t enroll, while others from the class of 2020 left college mid-semester.

For Jake, when learning went online, school started to recede from his mind. He lives with his grandparents, Juanita and Allen Bryant, who raised him because his parents weren’t ready to have kids, he said.

His grandmother works as a housekeeper at a casino more than an hour away, so Jake spends a lot of time alone with his grandfather, doing chores, cooking and feeding their 22 horses.

“When I was at home there was a lot of stuff that I had to do around the house to help my grandparents, so school wasn’t really on my mind,” Jake said. “I want to focus on home and help them out, so I can be there for them and help them out the way they helped me out when I was a kid.”

Like Jake, many Native students have family responsibilities – to help financially, or care for younger siblings or grandparents – that keep them close to home. The pandemic made some Native families even more reluctant to send their kids away to college, Curley said. In the past, she’s had parents get upset with her for suggesting their children apply to far-flung colleges.

“I have had a really hard time trying not to just be like, ‘Don’t listen to your mom and dad,’” she said. “It’s already scary to try to go out on your own.”

“It is going to affect our tribal economies, it’s going to affect the health and wellness … of our tribal people”

Diana Cournoyer, executive director of the nonprofit National Indian Education Association

Many of Curley’s students lost family members to the virus. At the beginning of last summer, she said she shared GoFundMe campaigns every other week to help cover funeral expenses for students’ relatives or other community members who had died from the coronavirus. At that time, the Navajo Nation had one of the highest per capita infection rates in the United States.

“It was just so scary and frustrating and sad,” she said. “Within the span of this year, we’ve had kids who have dealt with all of that, some of them who’ve dealt with it multiple times.”

When the pandemic hit in March 2020, Newcomb staff started calling students to check on their wellbeing. “It really helped us stay connected with our kids,” McLaughlin said.

Before the pandemic, Native teens had the highest suicide rate of any population group in the United States, and experts worry the pandemic and social isolation of the last year could make it worse.

Curley said that mental health will always take priority for her. “At the end of the day, who cares about college if you don’t care about living?” she said.

But as hard as the last year has been, Curley said it has also demonstrated her community’s resilience. “I think the focus here with our [Native] students was on all of the bad things — how much our kids were suffering, how much our communities were suffering. And it was all true, but there [has been] no focus on how hard some of our kids were working,” she said.

As for Jake, he eventually found a way to get to Curley’s class. His aunt bought him a better hotspot, and he started logging in and salvaged his grade. Affording the $45-a-month fee for data was sometimes difficult, he said.

But, he added, “It made me feel good about myself that I could come back from F and bring it up to a C+ and pass the class.”

If you or someone you know is having suicidal thoughts, you can call The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or reach the Crisis Text Line by texting HELLO to 741741.

Monica Braine, who is Assiniboine and Hunkpapa Lakota, contributed reporting.

This story about Navajo Nation was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education, with support from a grant from the Education Writers Association. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

The post The pandemic knocked many Native students off the college track appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

In January, Rosa Bermudez brought home a colorful worksheet from Stansbury Elementary School, meant to guide her “power plan” for a safe, healthy relationship to technology.

But it was in English, and as the 11-year-old tried to fill in blank bullet points, some things got lost in translation — like when she described her family’s media rules as “picking up toys” and “sweeping and mopping.”

Just having homework is a change of pace for Rosa, who before the pandemic struck, already knew what it’s like to go without teachers or classmates for months on end. Before enrolling at schools in Utah this past winter, she and her brothers missed out on roughly two years of regular education while their family sought refuge in the United States.

Along with their parents, Sandra Vásquez and Concepción Ventura, Rosa and her brothers — Joaquín, Jeremy, Jason, and Nixon, now ages 14, 7, 6 and 2, respectively — weathered significant delays and life-threatening conditions at the southern border. Then, when they finally reached the U.S., a global public health crisis left them vulnerable, at the whim of an already unwelcoming country that was suddenly locked down and afraid.

By early 2021, they had no insurance to pay for health care, no work permits to make ends meet. Not even the assurance that they could stay.

But after just a few days back in school this winter, Rosa was already determined to study — and eventually master — the language that everyone else spoke around her. She embraced the near-constant linguistic gymnastics she had to perform, going from English to Spanish, “del inglés al español”as a bilingual friend translated their teacher’s lessons and an app helped her decipher homework.

“Here, it’s necessary to learn English,” Rosa said in Spanish.

Related: Why a Texas school district is helping immigrants facing deportation

The coronavirus pandemic has disproportionately affected immigrant students and, more generally, English learners, who have struggled with hurdles such as language barriers, subpar broadband and limited at-home learning support, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

In more normal times, “attendance is not typically an issue” among the roughly 5 million English learners in U.S. public schools, experts from MPI wrote in a September policy brief. But last spring, as physical campuses shut down because of Covid-19, many of those usually attentive students dropped off the grid at alarmingly high rates.

Meanwhile, immigrants have been ravaged by the virus globally, as they’ve endured much higher risk of infection than native-born populations while their jobs have also been decimated by the economic downturn.

And, for many asylum seekers in the U.S., the pandemic caps off a seemingly unending cycle of trauma and helplessness — first in their home countries, then in Mexico and now here.

An arduous journey

Former President Donald Trump’s administration was just starting one of its most scrutinized immigration policies — the paradoxically named “Migrant Protection Protocols,” or MPP, devised to discourage people from supposedly “taking advantage of the immigration system”— when Vásquez and Ventura’s family set out for the U.S. in January 2019.

Throughout their journey, Vásquez tried to continue educating her children, teaching them addition, subtraction, vowels, painting, and whatever else she could.

At their home in Corinto, El Salvador, the adults ran a furniture business but had been forced to pay crippling “taxes” to the gang MS-13. Relatives had been similarly extorted, and some victims of the racket had ended up dead.

To escape persecution and possible murder, Vásquez’s family decided to join her mother and her three American-citizen siblings stateside. But when they finally made it to the border after being waylaid in transit for much of the year, they were placed in MPP and sent back to Tijuana.

Known colloquially as “Remain in Mexico,” the protocols dumped people with upcoming immigration court hearings into crime-riddled Mexican cities, instead of letting them wait in the U.S. Although the Department of Homeland Security claimed Mexico would provide the migrants “with all appropriate humanitarian protections for the duration of their stay,” people in MPP were in fact largely abandoned, navigating what oftentimes turned out to be life-threatening situations with few resources.

Stranded in a foreign country, they became easy prey for cartel members and corrupt Mexican police.

Asylum seekers forced to wait in Mexico have suffered at least 1,544 incidents of rape, murder, torture or other violent attacks — including 341 kidnappings or attempted kidnappings of children, according to Human Rights First.

“People died in MPP. People were subjected to severe violence in MPP. People were trafficked from MPP,” said Alyssa Kane, managing attorney at Aldea – The People’s Justice Center, which represents migrant families.

Victims of MPP have suffered at least 1,544 incidents of rape, murder, torture or other violent attacks — including 341 kidnappings or near-kidnappings of children, according to Human Rights First.

In Ciudad Juárez, a 10-year-old girl witnessed men sexually assault and throw acid on her mother, causing second-degree burns all the way to the bone. When their family sought asylum in the U.S., they were still sent back to Mexico for months, according to BuzzFeed News.

After an 11-year-old child and his father were kidnapped and their captors threatened to harvest the little boy’s organs, the family told a reporter that they were returning to Honduras — the country they fled in the first place.

Related: After a hate crime, a town welcomes immigrants into its schools

In Tijuana, as Vásquez’s family lived first at a shelter and then in a rented room, she never left her kids alone. They spent their days inside, while they waited out five hearings. For their court date each month, the whole family presented at a U.S. port of entry around 3 a.m. and took a bus to see a U.S. immigration judge. Then, they had to turn around and go back to Mexico to wait for their next hearing.

The appearances were mostly a formality: A new, hardline transit ban that took effect nationwide in September 2019 automatically disqualified them from asylum. The executive branch had generally been reshaping U.S. immigration law and precedent to keep out people from similar backgrounds to theirs, whose homes Trump once ridiculed as “shithole countries.”

“They were crafting policy specifically to exclude people of certain nationalities, like people from Central America, people from Haiti, people from the Caribbean,” Kane said.

Vásquez and Ventura’s family was still eligible for a lesser-known, harder-to-access category called “withholding of removal,” a difficult-to-win protection that doesn’t come with the same security or pathway to permanent residence that asylum offers. It does, however, ensure that people won’t be deported to their home countries, at least for the time being. But they couldn’t afford an attorney to help them navigate the U.S.’ complex immigration system in court — a major disadvantage experienced by the lion’s share of migrants forced to wait in Mexico during their proceedings. The vast majority of people in MPP have lost their cases and been ordered to leave the U.S., Vásquez and Ventura’s family included.

Ironically, under U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s byzantine system, their family had to travel deep into the U.S. interior before they could be sent back to their home country. In March 2020, the government flew Vásquez, Ventura and their kids all the way to Berks County Residential Center, an immigration detention facility for families just over an hour outside of Philadelphia.

“One of their main goals in staying here legally, is to be able to send their kids to school.”

Alyssa Kane, managing attorney at Aldea

At Berks, some immigrants have found an invaluable resource not available to them in Mexico: lawyers. Kane’s legal team at Aldea, which represents families at Berks for free, helped Vásquez and her family file an appeal. That allowed them to stay in the U.S. while they fought their case.

With deportation temporarily off the table, immigration officials sent the family on a Greyhound bus to live in Utah, near Vásquez’s mother and siblings. Their travel itinerary was relentless, with short legs punctuated by stops that extended into the early morning, like an hour and a half layover in Pittsburgh at 2:10 a.m., and a departure from Kansas City just after midnight.

By the time they got to Salt Lake City at 10:35 p.m. on March 29, 2020, they had stopped in at least nine states during back-to-back bus rides over three days, even as life in the U.S. screeched to a halt amid the climbing death toll from Covid-19.

“Because the bus had people, I was afraid coming,” Vásquez said. But nothing happened to her family, and finally, they had arrived at their destination.

Back to school?

After three lost semesters and months spent inside, bored, amid the pandemic in the U.S., Joaquín, Rosa, Jeremy and Jason, Vásquez’s four school-aged kids, seemed to be close to returning to class.

Then, a series of obstacles knocked them even further off course last fall.

At first, with Covid-19 still ravaging the country, Vásquez preferred to have Joaquín, Rosa, Jeremy and Jason take class remotely, logging onto borrowed school computers from home with her guidance. But none of their coursework made sense.

“I didn’t know what it was saying, because it was in English,” Joaquín said.

“I couldn’t translate, help them. I couldn’t. I didn’t understand anything,” Vásquez said. “They didn’t either.”

Vásquez decided to send Rosa, Jeremy and Jason to study in-person. (Joaquín, who has aged out of elementary school, was redirected to a different campus that was too far away.) They went to class for about a month, until the family moved mid-semester. Rezoned to a new school, the children were asked about their vaccinations; they needed different shots from the ones they had received growing up in El Salvador.

From chickenpox and hepatitis A to meningococcal and Tdap, Joaquín, Rosa, Jeremy and Jason each needed multiple jabs, which cost $120 altogether. The lump sum was a big ask for their parents, who were not legally authorized to work in the U.S.

By late-2020, Vásquez had decided to wait until January to send her kids back to class. She still taught them in the meantime, as she had in Mexico.

Asylum applications have skyrocketed in recent years, and despite the constant specter of possible deportation, children like Rosa and her brothers usually want to go to public school while they await a resolution to their cases, Kane said. Parents are generally very supportive of that, too.

“One of their main goals in staying here legally, is to be able to send their kids to school, and ensure that their kids get — are able to get — a good education,” Kane said.

But the immigration detention centers that jail families often have a similar institutional feel to school campuses, setting kids up for trauma when they eventually return to a classroom setting, Kane said.

At Berks, for example, the facility grounds are eerily reminiscent of a public school, both from the outside and on the inside. Yet families aren’t allowed to leave, and they’re constantly under the control of facility employees who have infamously abused their authority, including one guard who pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a 19-year-old detained there. 

“Many children do struggle with going back into that system of having a teacher tell them what to do, and having to sit in one place for most of a day, and do what you’re told,” Kane said. “They experienced that in such a traumatic way.”

“I couldn’t translate, help them. I couldn’t. I didn’t understand anything.”

Sandra Vásquez, a mom seeking asylum with her husband and five kids

Kids who spent half a year or longer in Mexico because of MPP are also dealing with major education gaps, she said, and she expressed concerns about “how much that instability and that trauma will affect a child’s educational development later on.”

Then, a bevy of logistical obstacles — from connectivity issues to lack of space and resources at home — make accessing online education challenging for English learners as a group, despite herculean efforts by states to provide hotspots and devices.

“It is still very clear that many students are — have been — lost, that teachers are still not seeing these students engaged, or are not having regular contact with these children,” said Melissa Lazarín, senior advisor at the Migration Policy Institute. “There’s no question in my mind that these students are overrepresented in the group, in the category of students who are not getting, are not reaping the benefits of remote learning right now.”

Related: How teachers are helping students affected by deportations

In Los Angeles, for example, less than half of English learners participated in remote learning each week during the first months of the pandemic, according to an MPI report. Similar phenomena cropped up in other cities, including Sacramento and Chicago.

In the fall — the first full semester affected by Covid-19 — low grades skyrocketed among English learners in areas such as Fairfax County, Virginia, and Montgomery County, Maryland. By December, 36.1 percent of English learners in Connecticut were chronically absent.

At the Granite School District in Utah, where Vásquez’s children attend school, 609 of the district’s 16,036 English learners haven’t logged on at all to the online learning platform this spring.

“Hopefully, a president who’s coming into office espousing unity will be the one to finally unite Congress around this extremely divisive issue.”

Sarah Pierce, policy analyst at MPI

But, despite all the obstacles stacked against them, Joaquín, Rosa, Jeremy and Jason were determined to get back in class. In January, the family finally got their costly vaccines. (The district said it had informed them that immunizations were available through charitable donations.)

Soon after, the elementary-aged kids trooped to their new school, Stansbury, and Joaquín started at West Lake STEM Junior High.

In the days leading up to her return to class, Rosa was nervous.

“People speak English, and I don’t understand them,” she said. 

New, cautious hope

As Vásquez’s kids geared up for a new semester at new schools, the White House was simultaneously preparing to welcome a new commander-in-chief whose radically different platform could change their family’s future.

After being sworn into office in January, President Joe Biden immediately took a sledgehammer to some of Trump’s most extreme policies, including practices that affected migrants and asylum seekers. Berks’ troubled hallways have emptied out, at least for now, and one of the Biden administration’s ambitious legislative goals is meaningful reform that re-envisions the nation’s broken immigration system, after decades of gridlock.

“Hopefully, a president who’s coming into office espousing unity will be the one to finally unite Congress around this extremely divisive issue,” said Sarah Pierce, a policy analyst at MPI. “But it definitely [is] an uphill battle.”

Biden has also promised to dismantle his predecessor’s intricate web of immigration regulations, but much of Trump’s legacy will take months if not years to undo, as changes wind through tedious red tape and get caught up in the courts.

Related: Going to school when your family is in hiding from ICE

Meanwhile, all eyes have once again turned to the U.S.-Mexico border, where a humanitarian challenge is unfolding as the new administration faces an influx of migrants, and officials are now struggling to process and care for thousands of vulnerable children and families amid the pandemic.

In March, U.S. Customs and Border Protection encountered 18,890 children traveling across the border unaccompanied by parents or guardians — a monthly record, NBC News reported.

But there’s hope at the border, too. People in MPP who still have active cases are finally entering the U.S., and the Biden administration is considering a complete overhaul of the existing defensive asylum process so it’s more efficient for future applicants.

For now, it’s still unclear what will happen to families such as Vásquez’s. They’re in a holding pattern, waiting for either an announcement from the new administration or a decision from the Supreme Court about whether MPP, now defunct, was lawful. 

While they wait, they’re building a life in their new communities.

At his junior high, Joaquín’s favorite class is reading. The three younger siblings are on a waiting list for a Spanish dual-language program and are receiving English language development services in the meantime, as well as targeted instruction to help them learn the language, according to the Granite School District’s administration.

Spanish is a common language locally, and support is there for students who need help, said Charlene Lui, director of educational equity for the district. But because Vásquez’s family is new in town, they may not have known how to reach out, Lui conceded.

“We definitely need to do a better job at that,” she said, “making sure that they’re aware of the services that we have available.”

On the “power plan” worksheet, one of Rosa’s early assignments at Stansbury, she was asked to list her “favorite real life activities.” Many 11-year-olds in the U.S. might fixate on sports or sleepovers, but not her.

“Estudiar,” she wrote. To study.

This story about asylum seekers was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

The post Seeking asylum in a time of Covid appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

Pep rallies are supposed to be joyful, loud and unabashed. Having just turned 12 in the fall of 2017, Alan bubbled over with excitement ahead of his first rally at Deming Intermediate School in Deming, New Mexico, a small city near the Mexican border.

Classrooms aren’t easy for Alan, his mother said. (We are using Alan’s middle name to protect his privacy.) She described him as a gentle, soulful boy going through life with a collection of medical conditions including Tourette syndrome. His tics and shouts, all beyond his control, make him an easy target for bullies and, to some school staff, a problem student to be corrected.

At the rally that October day more than two years ago, Alan began stomping and shouting, cheering for his new school. The noise was too much for some classmates one bleacher row down from his.

The girls sitting there told school staff he was kicking them — a claim Alan and his mother, Juliet Moreno, deny.

“Everyone was doing it,” Alan said recently, recalling that day several years ago. “I was just doing it too. What did I do?”

“You don’t punish a child by denying them an education.”

Raymond Pierce, president of the Southern Education Foundation

Nevertheless, the meeting in the principal’s office that followed ended with Alan suspended.

“My son loves school. He loves to learn,” Moreno said. “He was crying on the way home, saying, ‘I don’t want to miss school, Mom.’ ”

It wasn’t meant to be a day for tears, but there Alan was, a tall, sturdy boy with thick black hair and wet cheeks, sobbing in the passenger seat of his mom’s Buick.

Alan was suspended for three days that time. A scuffle a few months later, Moreno said, netted him a week out of school and a visit from police at their home. School officials did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Moreno worries about how schoolhouse sanctions could put her son on a path toward the criminal justice system. She’s right to be concerned.

Most American children who age into the criminal justice system do so in middle school — every state allows for the prosecution of children as young as 12, though most set the threshold earlier, or not at all — and suspension from school is predictive of incarceration later in life. For Black, Native and Latino boys, like Alan, research by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights shows the impact to be especially severe.

And while the pandemic closed middle schools across the country, it doesn’t appear to have shut down school discipline. It is too soon to have firm data on suspensions, expulsions and school-based arrests during the pandemic, but some experts working directly with children of color say police are now often just sent to kids’ homes.

Amanda Gallegos, a staffer with SouthWestOrganizing Project in Albuquerque, which aims to empower disenfranchised communities, said the middle schoolers she works with are struggling.

Electives and school activities have been curtailed, said Gallegos, a field organizer whose work includes running youth programs and political actions. School discipline, she said, has been handed to police, who make “welfare checks” on students who miss online classes.

“Middle school, that’s when you’re figuring out how to be a human,” Gallegos said. “We always call it the equalizer,” she said, adding that middle school tends to be a crummy experience for most people.

Related: If schools don’t overhaul discipline, ‘teachers will still be calling the police on our Black students’

Both suspensions and arrests have been on a downward track after peaking in the mid-1990s, but hundreds of thousands of boys of color are subjected to both every year.

Some lament that decline and the apparent shift to relatively unproven alternatives. In a recent survey drawing responses from 1,219 teachers and conducted by the charter schools advocacy organization the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an overwhelming majority of teachers viewed suspension and expulsion as useful to keep classrooms safe.

Softer, more holistic approaches to school discipline have nonetheless been gaining traction in schools nationally for the past two decades, but experts worry the shift is too slow. If the changes aren’t accelerated, they say, the risk of abandoning too many of this generation’s Black, Latino and Native children to the justice system remains high.

A middle schooler who has been suspended is, by some estimates, nearly four times more likely to end up convicted compared to demographically identical peers. Students suspended or expelled early in adolescence are often shunted into remedial classes and never returned to the mainstream. That means they’re not “reading Mark Twain and Shakespeare and Maya Angelou,” taking algebra or learning world history, said Raymond Pierce, president of the Southern Education Foundation. Some lose interest, drop out or wind up in jail.

Disruptive behavior must be dealt with, said Pierce, whose organization formed to help educate freed Black people after the Civil War. But he worries suspensions make things worse.

Over 60 percent — The proportion of Black seventh graders who were suspended in a single year at two Atlanta middle schools.

“You don’t punish a child by denying them an education,” Pierce continued. “The appropriate thing to do is meet the child where he or she is.”

Particularly galling both to experts and parents, discipline doled out in middle school often punishes behaviors that are entirely appropriate for 11- to 14-year-olds.

“If you just hang around middle school kids, you’ll see them pushing and shoving each other,” said Melissa Sickmund, director of the National Center for Juvenile Justice. “If adults do that, it is assault. But if it’s happening in a school and there’s no blood … that kid does not need to be arrested.”

Many of the systems aimed at America’s youth are out of sync with the science, according to a report released in 2013 by the National Research Council. The study’s authors pointed to a fluke of anatomical development — parts of the brain influencing pleasure-seeking and emotional responses grow faster than parts supporting self control.

“It’s not just a refusal to do right, it’s that inability that’s part of their development,” Sickmund said.

The lag becomes especially apparent in middle school, when children start really roughing one another up. Normal adolescent behavior, Sickmund said, winds up criminalized. While the impression is that high schoolers are more “crime-prone,” she said, middle school is when students are most at risk of arrest for non-injurious assaults.

For Black boys and other children of color the increased the risk of being punished at school begins as early as preschool, according to government data. And by middle school, the school-to-prison pipeline for Black, Latino and Native children can be unsparingly direct.

Local news headlines paint the picture: In August 2019, a police officer at a Farmington, New Mexico, middle school declared he’d “had enough” after an 11-year-old brushed by a school administrator on her way through a door. Officer Zachary Christensen, who was later convicted of child abuse in the attack and sentenced to probation, slammed the girl to the concrete outside her middle school and handcuffed her as school staff looked on. Appearing in a New Mexico court on Jan. 14, Christensen apologized, explaining, “I’m not a social worker and the way I was trained was how I responded.”

Related: Is the pandemic our chance to reimagine education for students with disabilities?

In January 2019, a Columbia, Missouri, girl arrested by mistake after a fight in her middle school’s hallway was jailed overnight. A video of the altercation, reviewed after she was jailed, showed she wasn’t involved.

Generations of advocates for Black students have made claims of broad racial prejudice among educators, an assertion that has been borne out by research. Studies have shown teachers are as biased against Black people as American society is broadly, and that school staff are likely to misread the expressions of Black children, seeing anger where there is none. Black students are also disproportionately punished for breaking dress codes and disobeying hairstyle restrictions and other minor misbehavior.

Sixty miles east of Los Angeles, “C” has been handcuffed four times by police at his middle school. (We are using C’s first initial to protect his privacy.) During one October 2019 arrest caught on the officer’s body camera, a Moreno Valley Unified School District officer knelt on C’s neck after dragging the 70-pound sixth-grader away from his desk in a special education classroom.

The 11-year-old’s alleged infraction? Throwing a rock near an officer the day before.

Speaking about the violence of his son’s schoolhouse arrest, C’s father, William, reflected on the tragedy that might’ve been. Months later, reckless force by police against another Black person, George Floyd, would end in a killing that shook the nation.

“I refused to let him go back to that school,” said William, who asked to be referred to only by his first name to protect his son’s privacy. “I feared for his life. I didn’t want to put him in another situation where the outcome could be worse.”

Like Alan, the New Mexico boy, C qualifies for special education. Officers placed at the schools aren’t trained to interact with children who have disabilities, C’s parents and their attorneys contend, and showed no compassion or skill in interactions with C.

C was kept handcuffed in a squad car for more than an hour before he was taken to a police station, according to a formal complaint made against the school district by attorneys representing the family.

C has since enrolled in a new school and has been doing well with distance learning, but William said the damage is lasting. He said his son, who dreamed as a kindergartner of becoming a police officer, no longer sleeps well and often comments that “everybody thinks he’s bad.”

“They put the children in a wrong state of mind,” William said of police officers in schools. “It makes them think they’re in a detention center or something like that.”

Related: ‘I can’t do this anymore’: How four middle schoolers are struggling through the pandemic

Moreno’s son Alan has avoided arrest, but only just. Police have popped in on their meetings with school staff. One day, Alan made comments at school that alarmed a teacher. Hours later, police officers were outside the Moreno home.

School staff members’ responses to Alan’s Tourette syndrome cut deepest, Moreno said. The syndrome is a neurological condition characterized by involuntary tics and, in rare cases, including Alan’s, profane outbursts. The best medicine is counterintuitive — if those nearby just ignore his occasional flinch or shout, he can just roll with them.

Instead, Alan has been bullied by peers and ostracized by school staff, said Moreno, who, with her attorney Gail Stewart, has taken administrative legal action against the school district.

Stewart describes a decision pattern she’s seen repeated countless times in her 21 years representing students with disabilities. What’s deemed in early elementary school as an academic deficit — difficulty reading, say — necessitating assistance is by middle school recast as a behavioral problem requiring correction. Discipline follows.

“The kids are struggling,” Stewart said. “They either shut down or act out.”

Toward the end of seventh grade, Alan was moved into a classroom by himself and taught by an aide. He wept when his mother told him he was being sequestered.

“Because I’m a single mom, we’re a team,” Moreno said. “This was the first time I had to lie to him. … I said, ‘We’ll make it cool.’ ”

11 — The age of one California boy violently arrested by campus police officers inside his middle school special education classroom.

The only other sweetener Moreno could offer was that the bullying would stop. Inside, the soft-spoken mother of two said, she felt like screaming.

Alan ended up spending much of eighth grade alone, too. Moreno said Alan overheard staff talking about him, suggesting, as a police officer did, that he was faking his disability.

“As an educator, I’m just appalled,” said Moreno, a bilingual speech pathologist of 18 years.

Related: Thousands of families in special education limbo

Suspensions increased steadily from the late 1980s through the 2011-12 school year and then fell precipitously, dropping 20 percent by the 2013-14 school year, according to a 2019 report to Congress by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

Yet Latino, Native and multiracial middle schoolers are still disciplined at higher than average rates, and the risk that classroom misbehavior ends in a suspension or a court date is acute for Black students. A study that tracked nearly 1 million Texas seventh graders found Black students disciplined for some infractions at rates 31 percent above the norm. Researchers at UCLA found suspension rates among Black middle school students were double the average; in a single year at two Atlanta middle schools, more than 60 percent of Black boys were suspended.

Until 2018, suspensions and arrests were commonplace at Woodland Hills Junior Senior High School, then the educational home to most seventh and eighth graders in the 3,800-student district in suburban Pittsburgh. Woodland Hills gained notoriety after a 2015 incident that saw a school-based police officer throw a 15-year-old boy to a hallway floor and, with the principal’s help, shock him with a Taser for talking back to a teacher.

Suspensions, expulsions and arrests were pervasive in the district, where students of color currently comprise 72 percent of the student body. Its elementary-level suspension rates were among the nation’s highest.

Change came when a newly elected school board brought in a new superintendent, James Harris.

Harris, a former military police officer, corporate marketer and restaurateur, was a school administrator in demand in the summer of 2018. When the dynamic, detail-oriented Black schools leader chose troubled Woodland Hills, he said, his friends wondered why.

Two years later, he had radically restructured the district. A rundown alternative school and a divisive magnet school were closed, elementary school enrollment rules were reset and a middle school was built. And on-campus police were phased out.

“The high school principal and I always talk about how we’re fighting history,” Harris said. “But we figure that every day is a new day that we’re adding to our history.”

“We’re fighting history. But we figure that every day is a new day that we’re adding to our history.”

James Harris, Woodland Hills School District superintendent

The “real change” for middle schoolers, Harris said, was a shift in the district’s school discipline policies. When students are pulled from class now, the staffer who deals with them must return with them to that class so the student may ask for permission to come back. This gives the teacher control and shows the rest of the class the student has remorse.

The 2019-20 school year passed without a single expulsion, and disciplinary referrals in the district have fallen 70 percent, Harris said, freeing teachers to work with students on academics. He believes those connections have changed the culture.

“They say, ‘You treat us like real people, ’” Harris said of the students he’s met. “Well, you are real people.”

Moreno wonders who will see her son that way, as a person whole and worthy, not incomplete or threatening.

The pandemic has kept Alan, now 15, and his 14-year-old brother home. Remote high school is going poorly. Heading into the winter break, Alan had straight F’s.

Alan said it’s hard for him to focus in class, though he’s glad the teachers call on him more than they did in middle school. He enjoys mariachi class — he plays guitar in the band — and golf team, which he enjoys for the quiet and companionship. Alan looks forward to returning to the classroom. His friends are in the honors classes, and he doesn’t get to see much of them.

Alan said he wants to work with computers as an adult. Or maybe in real estate. Or maybe, joking with his mom, he’ll become a traveling hair stylist to the stars like a man he saw on TikTok.

He wants a career, friendship and a full life, hopes that his mom shares despite middle school’s setbacks. But Moreno also worries that the way Alan was treated then, as someone to be protected against and shuffled aside, may presage the years ahead.

“Even the people who know he has what he has, the teachers, they call the police on him,” Moreno said of her eldest son. “I worry a lot about his future.”

This story about middle school was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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YAKIMA, Wash. — Tracy Renecker has been working almost nonstop since the coronavirus pandemic set in. A kitchen manager with the 16,000-student school district serving this central Washington city,  Renecker has been ordering ingredients, packing entrees and sides, and filling grocery sacks to build the five-breakfast, five-lunch kits passed out at the drive-up distribution point outside Washington Middle School, where she works.

Renecker knows what the bags of cut vegetables, single-serve cereal boxes and heat-and-eat bowls mean to parents picking them up each week. They are a lifeline to families, including her own. The school meal program “helps to stretch our money,” said Renecker, a former nursing assistant raising a 6-year-old and a 13-year-old in Yakima.

“I was a hungry child at one point, and I would hate to see any child go hungry,” she said. “I know they can’t learn when they’re worried about when they’re going to be fed.”

Yakima, an agricultural hub surrounded by orchards amid dry hills, was hit hard by both the pandemic and the attendant economic collapse. Summer brought spikes in infections — at least three of which sent children to the hospital — and unemployment, which nearly doubled in the area.

Many Yakima families qualified for food stamps or other forms of federal assistance before the pandemic hit, and that softened the blow in one specific way: The city’s schools already offered meals to all students for free, year-round. That’s because they participate in several U.S. Department of Agriculture programs, including one allowing school districts where more than 40 percent of children are in households that rely on social services like food stamps to feed every student at no cost to families.

Hundreds of American school districts that qualify for that USDA program, called the Community Eligibility Provision, don’t join it, largely due to cost concerns. Reimbursement rates to school districts are based on the percentage of students receiving social supports, and districts close to the 40 percent cutoff may end up spending more than they otherwise would.

 “School meals are just as important to students’ ability to succeed in school as textbooks and transportation.”

Crystal FitzSimons, policy analyst at the Food Research & Action Center

Today, though, nearly every school in the country can hand out meals for free, thanks to the emergency extension of a USDA school food program meant to provide no-cost meals to kids during the summer. After months of uncertainty, USDA announced on Oct. 9 that the expansion would last until the end of the school year.

The reprieve highlights an emergent truth: Schools feed America’s children. And the pandemic has forced schools toward providing free food to all students, long the dream of those fighting child hunger.

“That’s the best way to operate school nutrition programs,” said Crystal FitzSimons, a policy analyst for child nutrition at the Food Research & Action Center, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy organization lobbying for anti-hunger programs. “School meals are just as important to students’ ability to succeed in school as textbooks and transportation.”

Early in the pandemic, the USDA dropped strict rules dictating how and when meals could be served while allowing schools to hand out a week’s worth of meals at a time and rapidly expanding food support programs. It hasn’t been enough to stop hunger from spiking to historic highs, but it has taken the edge off for millions of kids. (While other USDA programs help feed adult caregivers, typically schools provide meals only for children.)

40 percent – share of families with young children worried about food during the pandemic, a fourfold increase over pre-pandemic levels

In normal times, 2.5 million children are “food insecure.” Today, experts say child hunger has skyrocketed. While firm data is not yet available, surveys taken over the summer found that around 40 percent of families with young children worried about food, a fourfold increase over pre-pandemic levels, according to Children’s HealthWatch, a research and policy organization run through Boston Medical Center. And Census Bureau surveys show that children in 1 in 6 American households were not eating enough in June because their families couldn’t afford food, according to a Brookings Institution review of those responses. Brookings estimated as many as 14 million children were going hungry in June.

Feeding that many kids is expensive. USDA has yet to say how much spending has increased since the start of the pandemic, and it was already spending plenty. A pre-Covid estimate projected that $25.5 billion would be spent during the fiscal year that began Oct. 1 for all nutrition initiatives aimed at children, including the $13.5 billion school lunch program.

There have been no updated estimates. The USDA Food and Nutrition Service, which includes the school meals programs, stopped releasing expenditures this summer, citing “significant issues with the accuracy of state-reported data as a result of Covid-19.”

The rise in hunger comes down to two elements: need and access, said Kelley McDonough, a senior program manager for No Kid Hungry, an anti-hunger advocacy group. The need created by the pandemic’s economic shock is unprecedented, McDonough said. At the same time, school closures and stay-at-home orders have disrupted how Americans access the country’s web of nutrition programs.

“Many families, especially those who are new to need, may not know that these programs exist or how to apply [for] them,” McDonough said. “Some families may forgo accessing these programs because they feel a sense of stigma, shame or distrust at accepting help in feeding their children.”

Related: How a federal free meal program affected school poverty stats

Opponents of the USDA free meals initiatives argue they end up feeding children from well-to-do homes, spending money better saved or spent on children who are truly in need. Jonathan Butcher, senior policy analyst with Heritage Foundation, a conserative policy engine, said previously that the school meals programs are “ballooning into a federal food entitlement for every child, regardless of need.” Butcher and others argued against Congressional efforts to expand the Community Eligibility Provision program put forward before the USDA expanded its other free meals programs in October.

Serving every child free school meals would remove that stigma, advocates argue. The federal government began buying surplus food for schoolchildren during the Great Depression. In 1946, the National School Lunch Program was launched because many of America’s young men had been too malnourished to serve in the military and commodity prices were dropping rapidly in the postwar economy. Steady expansions since have transformed free school meal programs into a crucial support for children whose caregivers’ incomes don’t fill the pantry. The school-to-stomach link has only strengthened as the science connecting nutrition and learning has advanced.

Early deficiencies in iron and other nutrients have been linked to poor motor and language skills, as well as lasting changes in how children’s brains take shape and how their bodies use dopamine, a neurotransmitter tied to impulse control and pleasure. Hyperactivity and poor memory are also thought to sometimes stem from childhood hunger. None of those conditions is conducive to learning, either in school or at home.

And then there’s the stress of not knowing where the next meal is coming from.

Worry is an early symptom of what those who monitor hunger refer to as “food insecurity,” a spectrum that begins with a person’s concern that they won’t be able to buy food and extends to reduced or missed meals, or “very low food security” in the USDA parlance.

“Food insecurity, it affects the biology of a child’s development at a cellular level,” said Richard Sheward, director of innovative partnerships with Children’s HealthWatch.

Children facing two or more stressors — food insecurity and housing instability often occur in tandem — are nine times as likely to experience developmental delays or poor health as children free of those pressures, Sheward said.

25 percent – share of USDA food assistance spending dedicated to free school meals

“The federal nutrition programs,” Sheward said, “are really the best medicines we have.”

While food banks offer some relief, the USDA’s food initiatives have 10 times their funding and are best positioned to help hungry families, Sheward said. The USDA school meals programs make up 25 percent of the agency’s overall food assistance spending.

School-based nutrition services have waxed as other federal programs meant to provide for American children wane. Per capita federal spending on children isonly about $5,000 a year, with Medicaid, the earned income tax credit, and food stamps (also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) forming the key supports available to financially stressed families. Welfare, which assisted 68 percent of America’s poorest families before the 1996 reform, now reaches less than a quarter of them.

Back in Yakima on a recent Wednesday afternoon, a stream of SUVs and minivans rolled up outside the shuttered two-story brick middle school where Renecker works. Drivers flashed a school ID, signaled how many children they would be feeding, and popped the back hatch for delivery. Many of those handing out food were kitchen workers and idled school bus drivers, all of whom have been braving the coronavirus to pass out meal kits since March.

“If we’re not feeding them, a lot of times that means they’re not getting fed,” said Stacey Locke, Yakima School District’s assistant superintendent of operations.

By that logic, a similar scene now plays out regularly at 90,000 schools-turned-food distribution sites around the United States.

Related: When kids go back to school, who’s going to drive the bus?

Describing school meals as “the frontline defense” against childhood hunger, Northwestern University economist Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach said families of color have been hardest hit by the spike in food insecurity. Almost one in four Black families with children were short on food, according to Census Bureau data included in a report she wrote in September.

“To our great shame, it’s essentially always the case that Black families have twice the rates of food insecurity as white families,” Schanzenbach said. “It should not make us complacent, but it does help us understand that it is not different with Covid, which indicates it isn’t going to go away.”

While Schanzenbach said the federal government hasn’t ramped up social services spending enough to match the clear need, offering free school meals across the country is an unprecedented step.

Even before the pandemic, a third of all schools were enrolled in the Community Eligibility Provision — the one that allows high-poverty schools like those in Yakima to serve meals at no cost to students. School lunch was already free to students at these schools. Often, breakfast was free, too, and sometimes dinner.

Created in 2010 and launched widely in 2014, the program was America’s first big step toward making school meals free for all. Nutrition was a focus of the Obama administration, one led by first lady Michelle Obama, and the creation of the schoolwide free meals program was a signature accomplishment of that campaign. While spending on USDA nutrition programs generally has declined by $14 billion since hitting a high of $110 billion in 2013, much of that decline is attributable to the economic recovery. Spending on child nutrition programs has steadily grown during the Trump administration, in part because of rising participation in free and reduced-price meals programs.

“To our great shame, it’s essentially always the case that Black families have twice the rates of food insecurity as white families.”

Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, Northwestern University economist

The USDA initiative is open to schools and districts where 40 percent or more of students come from homes relying on social supports like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the successor to food stamps, or who are homeless or living in foster homes.

Proponents of the no-cost meals program expected enrollment to spike due to the pandemic, until USDA announced it would pay for free meals at all schools, making the need for individual districts to enroll in the program moot. In the long run, though, child nutrition advocates hope more schools will sign on to the permanent free meals program.

For districts at the lower edge of eligibility, the free meals program can prove costly because the amount of funding provided is tied to the number of children receiving other social services, said FitzSimons of the Food Research & Action Center. USDA covers all meal expenses for an enrolled school or district where 62.5% of students come from homes that receive social supports. Institutions with fewer qualifying students may have to pick up part of the meals’ costs, though FitzSimons said administrative savings often mean the program makes financial sense in those as well.

FitzSimons said she and others with her employer, a 50-year-old advocacy organization fighting poverty-related hunger, have supported legislation that would increase USDA’s reimbursement rates to make the program tenable for more districts.

Making food free also allows schools to innovate.

Across the country, an estimated 3 million students start the day hungry, and many arrive too late to eat breakfast served in school cafeterias. In East Baton Rouge, Louisiana, which serves free meals to all students, the solution administrators settled on was eating in class.

Before the pandemic, students arrived each morning to bagged breakfasts waiting in the classrooms or on carts parked in the entries. Students at 36 of the district’s 73 schools participate in the flexible breakfast program — eating as they wait for the morning bell or in their seats as class begins.

All that would have been impossible if the schools had to find a way to make students pay, said Nadine L. Mann, chief financial director for child nutrition programs at the East Baton Rouge Parish School System. Though schools still often collect applications for free or reduced-price meals because the data is used to direct federal and state funding, free meals for all students, Mann said, are just “so much more efficient.”

No-charge meals also address another persistent friction point for American schools, meal debt.

Children who run up a tab for school meals are forced to take second-rate “alternative meals” or are cut off entirely from food service. That includes children who are signed up to receive reduced-price meals but who still must make a 30- or 40-cent copay.

“Feed the damn kids.”

Del. Danica Roem, Virginia State Delegate

Figures collected by the industry’s leading professional group, the School Nutrition Association, show that about 87 percent of districts that are not enrolled in the USDA no-cost meals program carry meal debt they’re required to collect. Around a quarter of districts with all schools enrolled in the program reported meal debt.

“I’ve worked long enough to remember the days when I had to make phone calls to parents and say, ‘You owe money. We’re not going to feed your child,’ ” Mann said.

Related: How trauma and stress affect a child’s brain development

Outrage over meal debt in part motivated several of the school nutrition bills that Del. Danica Roem has put forward in her three years in the Virginia House of Delegates.

Roem, who represents the Manassas area, backed bills blocking schools from pushing alternative meals on indebted children or forcing children to throw away food they’d been served but couldn’t pay for. The Democrat also sponsored a bill, signed into law Oct. 13 after passing unanimously, that will require as many as 180 schools in Virginia to join the USDA no-cost meal program.

“This is the only way to guarantee that no child goes hungry,” she continued. “If you go to a public school in America, meals should be guaranteed to you, just like a school bus is guaranteed to you.”

While administrative issues and cost concerns stopped some school leaders from signing on to the program, Roem said a handful simply believed children should pay for their food. It is a position for which she has no patience.

“I’ve got to eat. You’ve got to eat. We’ve all got to eat,” Roem said. “Feed the damn kids.”

This story about free school meals was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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In Florida and Wisconsin, schools have padlocked or sealed drinking fountains to keep kids from using them. Students at a private school in San Rafael, California, are learning in outdoor classrooms created from tree stumps and hay bales. And in Houston, students at home and on campus played songs together on makeshift instruments for a hybrid music class.

Those are just a few examples of how the coronavirus pandemic has transformed school buildings and inspired new “Covid classrooms” this fall, as illustrated by photographs and videos readers submitted to The Hechinger Report.

As more schools reopen, we want to continue sharing your photos from around the country. You can find directions here for how to submit your images and videos.

A few weeks before students returned to Biloxi High School in Mississippi, broadcast journalism teacher Olivia Dunwoody joined a virtual faculty meeting to review new safety procedures the administration had set for the new year.

Dunwoody and other teachers wanted to share that guidance widely with students and teachers in advance of school reopenings. So they recruited members of the student council and a theater group to demonstrate the new procedures — for arriving at bus stops and at school, sanitizing classrooms and behaving in the cafeteria, among other rules — in a series of videos.

At one school in Stoneham, Massachusetts, classroom desks are spread far apart to maintain physical distance among students. Federal and state guidelines differ on how much distancing is necessary. 

Elsewhere, a school used caution tape to prevent students from roaming through bookshelves in the library. While the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) has encouraged librarians to follow social distancing and manage traffic flow in stacks, nearly a quarter of school-level librarians told the AASL in an August survey that their school’s library would not be open or used at all.

In Newark, New Jersey, more than 200 students and families joined the KIPP TEAM Academy, a charter school that started the year remotely, for a back-to-school book swap and supply distribution day in August. The charter network’s Liberty and Sunrise academies in Miami held similar events, not pictured here, for students to pick up laptops, uniforms and other supplies in a safe and socially distanced way, said spokeswoman Jessica Shearer.

“This event allowed students to safely see some of their teachers in person before the start of the school year online,” she said in an email.

On the West Coast, the Marin Waldorf School in San Rafael, California, moved instruction completely outdoors when it resumed preschool through eighth grade classes on Sept. 8.

Admissions director Chantal Valentine said the private school recently built 13 outdoor classrooms, using tree stumps as seats and bales of hay for walls in redwood groves.

Meghan Mayer, a language arts teacher and popular TikTok creator in Sarasota, Florida, posted this tour of Brookside Middle School to show viewers safety precautions — including one-way stairwells and plastic dividers on students’ desks — being adopted during the pandemic.

“No more water fountains,” Mayer commented regarding the trash bags that had been taped over a pair of drinking fountains. “Students have to bring their own water bottles, and they have to be clear plastic.”

“I wish the sanitizer smelled good, but honestly it smells awful, so bring your own.”

Meghan Mayer,  teacher in Sarasota, Florida

Her video also included a gallon of hand sanitizer that Mayer said was in every schoolroom: “I wish the sanitizer smelled good, but honestly it smells awful, so bring your own.”

At Navajo Technical University, roughly 1 in 4 students have no access to the internet at home, prompting the public, tribally controlled university in Crownpoint, New Mexico, to search for alternatives to remote learning. Some students attend hybrid classes at least one day a week on campus, where the university has installed sneeze guards and limited access to the library, according to Daniel Vandever, the communications director.

Enrollment in the university’s vocational programs, which prepare students for jobs in the skilled trades, has declined, since those courses typically require face-to-face instruction. But Vandever said instructors have found workarounds: for example, dividing classes in fields such as welding technology, with half the students working indoors while the others work outside.

The Village School, a private pre-K through high school in Houston, reopened with hybrid classes this fall. In these visuals, middle schoolers learned to play “La Bamba” with plastic buckets and other materials they could find in class or at home.

At K-12 schools that stayed fully remote, parents and teachers alike have gotten creative.

At Paradise High School in Northern California, English and broadcasting teacher Doug Carroll prepared to instruct students from his empty classroom in the school building. Amy Sumner, in Columbus, Ohio, began the year with her three children in fully remote classes, but their schools have since switched to a hybrid model.

“The bright red padlock on a water fountain … just struck me as sad.”

Skylar Primm, teacher, High Marq Environmental Charter School

Sumner created a “learning pod” with two other families and converted her basement into a classroom, where she oversees work sent from the district and manages individualized education programs for two of the kids. Sumner’s mother-in-law also helps with a virtual art class.

“I hosted Zoom meetings this summer to decide on a school name and mascot, and the Sumnerds Private Academy, Home of the Brainiacs, was created,” she said. “So far it’s going great!”

Staff at the High Marq Environmental Charter School in Montello, Wisconsin, locked up a drinking fountain to prevent students from using it.

Teacher Skylar Primm noticed the change while visiting the school in August for a much-delayed outdoor graduation ceremony for the Class of 2020.

“The bright red padlock on a water fountain … just struck me as sad,” he said in an email.

After four weeks of in-person classes, High Marq has yet to record any cases of coronavirus transmission on campus, said Primm. But “Wisconsin’s cases are exploding,” he added, “so I think we all feel like the walls are closing in.”

— Caroline Preston contributed reporting to this story.

This story about Covid classrooms was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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SANTA FE, N.M. – When Juan Pablo entered third grade, he was not yet reading in English. He was beginning to lose confidence in his abilities and worried about being held back.

His teacher referred him to Reading Quest, the nonprofit I run, where he could receive free, weekly personalized tutoring. After just a few months, Juan Pablo grew one full grade level in reading. He later attended our Reading Is Magic summer camp and grew another full grade level in reading in just two weeks.

By last spring, Juan Pablo could read the popular “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” series. His confidence grew along with his test scores in both Spanish and English. He played the king in our Readers Theater Summer Camp and was a strong leader, despite sometimes sketchy internet service.

Related: What parents need to know about the research on how kids learn to read

Juan Pablo’s success story comes at a time of great concern about how struggling readers will get the help they need during the coronavirus era. Unequal access to quality Wi-Fi and lack of technological devices make it difficult for teachers to serve their students online, especially beginning and struggling readers who need extra attention.

At Reading Quest, 98 percent of our students qualify for free or reduced lunch,  and 85 percent are native Spanish speakers. Sixty-seven percent of children in our area are not reading proficiently at grade level. Some have learning disabilities. Our team of 11 adults and 22 teen tutors have helped our students make remarkable gains, even with online learning replacing face-to-face instruction.

Related: Four things you need to know about the new reading wars

With so much of teaching now online, teachers everywhere are wondering how we can best support struggling readers. Here are some tips I compiled that can work with online teaching, based on 40 years of experience in the United States and throughout the world.

• Make reading come alive. Teaching the rules of reading according to the science of reading acquisition might not seem like much fun, but by integrating American Sign Language, songs, Readers Theater, games, videos and engaging decodable books into the mix, it can all come alive. There are excellent decodable books out there, such as those by Nora Gaydos.
• Teach phonics with compassion.  Making phonics instruction fun, engaging and effective for all children can be challenging, especially online. Having compassion for ourselves and remembering that this is new for all of us can be a game changer – for students and teachers alike. We need to be kind and gentle with ourselves; then it’s much easier to remember to feel compassion for that student who is not paying attention or who might be too anxious to participate in an online class.
• Choose books wisely. Remember the five-finger rule: If a child struggles with five or more words on a page, that book might be too hard for the child to read alone. But it might be a wonderful read-aloud book. Reading aloud at any age is a powerful way to build vocabulary, comprehension and knowledge. Read with expression or take turns and see what happens. When children find a book they are interested in, let them read it – even if it’s the 35th book about dinosaurs this year, or yet another book by John Green. Let your middle school student read “Dog Man” books all day long if it hooks the student on reading. Introduce your teens to books like “The Stars Beneath Our Feet”  and the audiobook of “Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe,” read by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Graphic novels are also powerful tools for getting kids, especially reluctant middle schoolers, into the reading habit. “The Breakaways,” the Narwhal and Jelly series, “Black Panther,” Raina Telgemeier’s books and the “Amulet” series are a few. Look for books that honor and celebrate your child’s culture and language but don’t push it. Let the child choose. Also, check out Epic, which has thousands of books for readers at all levels free of charge for teachers and students, including audiobooks and “read-to-me” books. 
• Use games. It’s striking that hardly any board games are designed to teach reading. However, almostany board game can be transformed into a reading game simply by showing a word card to the student with each spin of the die.  Jenga can become a reading game if you write words on both sides of each block. Fortnite Monopoly or Candyland games can be an opportunity to practice reading if you include word cards with each roll of the dice.
• Go online.  Use digital board games with digital word cards for small reading groups, or play chess and checkers and other free games at Toytheater.com.  It’s also easy on Zoom or Google Meet to type in the words you want students to read when it’s their turn, or hold up a small whiteboard. Playing online Dungeons & Dragons, or writing stories, songs, raps and poems, can be powerfully healing and connecting. Check out Write the World, 826 National, Word Art and Storyboard That. Also, Models of Excellence has the largest collection of inspiring, high-quality student work I’ve ever seen.
• Take virtual trips. For younger students, virtual field trips to zoos, museums and aquariums can spark imaginations and curiosity. Visit National Geographic Kids and check out the T-Rex Hangman-style game; complete a Funny Fill-In with your class (similar to Mad Libs) and let students choose which Personality Quizzes they want to take. Your students will be having so much fun that they will forget they are doing something they might ordinarily avoid.
• Use apps and online reading programs. Check out Red Apple Reading for beginning readers; the Reading Raven app; LetterSchool for children learning how to write their letters; and BookNook. There are a lot of expensive products out there, but we have found these to be free or low-cost, and especially effective for our readers. Parents report that their children enjoy them as well.
• Care for yourself and your students. Students who struggle with reading need warm, supportive, engaging interactions with a caring adult who understands the way children acquire the skills of reading. All students, regardless of their home situations or learning and language differences, can make remarkable progress.

As teachers, we all know the importance of warm, caring human interaction. With extra effort, support and some new resources, we can still provide it when teaching online.

Rayna Dineen is executive director of Reading Quest. She founded an EL Education pre-K-8 school in Santa Fe (Santa Fe School for the Arts & Sciences),  where she served as teacher and principal for 13 years and where Reading Is Magic and Reading Quest began in 2012. 

This story about reading instruction was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

The post OPINION: Tips on teaching reading in the time of coronavirus appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

In Las Vegas, where more than 1 in 6 workers are now unemployed, Fernando Valenzuela decided to quit his job this summer. He’s one of nearly 4,300 substitute teachers in the Clark County School District earning roughly $100 per day, without sick leave or health coverage.

Though Valenzuela, who filled a full-time teaching vacancy at the Nevada Learning Academy, earned a bit more — $120 a day — than the Clark County average, it was still not enough for him to brave the risks of working at a school during the escalating coronavirus pandemic.

“It’s frustrating,” Valenzuela said. “It’s been almost 20 years since our last raise. … As much as I love working with these kids, it’s not worth it to me. I’m 29. I’m healthy, but there’s still people dying out there at my age.”

Each year, the Clark County School District in southern Nevada relies on substitutes like Valenzuela to fill hundreds of teacher vacancies and cover day-to-day teacher absences. The district also recruits educators from overseas and brings recent retirees back to the classroom temporarily.

Those patchwork solutions, however, may be in jeopardy this fall, as the ongoing pandemic and deepening recession throw new challenges at school districts trying to stanch teacher shortages across the country.

A potential exodus of older educators susceptible to the coronavirus and those with existing health problems may fuel already high turnover in Las Vegas and elsewhere. A full third of teachers told Education Week they were somewhat or very likely to leave their job this year — compared to just 8 percent who leave the profession in a typical year.  Many substitutes also may quit. Now, new restrictions on foreign visas will make it harder for some states, including Nevada, to import teachers from the Philippines and other countries to work in already hard-to-staff positions.

And for those teachers willing to return to the classroom — whether virtually or in person — pink slips may be coming later this year. The massive layoffs predicted at the start of the pandemic haven’t happened — yet. But experts say as the economic crisis decimates state tax revenue and forces states to slash budgets, it’s more and more likely the nation won’t have enough teachers to staff schools even once reopening is safe.

“Without a [federal] rescue package, the layoffs are coming, even if they’re not happening right away in September,” said Dan Goldhaber, director of the Center for Education Data and Research (CEDR) at the University of Washington. “Across the country, school districts are wrestling with this now.”

Already, the state of the workforce was shaky. Roughly one in seven teachers transfers or quits after the conclusion of each academic year, while teacher prep programs have seen a steady decline in enrollment.

Educators’ worries about being exposed to the virus in the classroom aren’t theoretical. Nearly 1,200 students in Georgia and more than 2,000 students in Mississippi, along with hundreds of educators, have already been forced to quarantine because of outbreaks in schools.

In Clark County — the nation’s fifth-largest school district, with about 330,000 students — classes resumed this week with just over 400 vacant teaching positions — down from about 750 in July, according to a district spokesperson.

As of mid-August, 21 of the 25 largest school districts in the country, including Clark County, had decided to start the year with remote learning only, according to Education Week research. But Clark County leaders will revisit the decision every 30 days, worrying immunocompromised educators like Leslie Stevenson.

She’s one of many teachers in Las Vegas who filed paperwork with the district to document their existing health conditions, in hopes of claiming a permanent remote assignment when students return to school in person. For Stevenson, the death of Nick Cordero, a 41-year-old Broadway actor, to Covid-19 made the disease feel like more of a threat.

“He was a healthy, relatively young Caucasian male with money. I’m none of those things,” she said. “If he perished, why should I feel safe?”

In many places hit hardest by the pandemic, teacher shortages were already critical. In Mississippi, where some public health experts have warned that it’s too soon to return, almost two-thirds of the state’s school districts don’t have enough fully certified teachers or have so many at retirement age that they might not have enough in the near future, according to the state.

Teacher salaries in Mississippi are among the nation’s lowest, and the threat of coronavirus has made enticing teachers to stay, much less come to fill open jobs, even more arduous for principals who scrambled in the best of times to staff classrooms.

In the Mississippi Delta, Superintendent Jermall Wright is desperate to find special education teachers for the schools he oversees in Yazoo City, which were taken over by the state along with schools in Humphreys County because of chronic underperformance. Wright managed to reduce many teacher vacancies when he came on board a year ago, but he still needs five special education teachers in order to be fully staffed this fall.

Related: After years of inaction, Delta teacher shortage reaches ‘crisis’ levels

The consequences if he doesn’t find them could be devastating for kids already far behind. In Yazoo City, in 2018-19, fewer than 7 percent of children with disabilities were proficient on reading and math exams, less than one-third of the state average. Worried about how students were already starting from a dismal baseline, Wright had hoped to place two teachers, serving a mix of children with and without disabilities, in the district’s in-person and online classrooms. Having students with disabilities learn in general education classrooms, rather than isolating them in separate classrooms, is a strategy that research says can give children receiving special education services a better shot at graduating from high school and better academic success. But his plan will be an uphill battle if he can’t find enough teachers.

“It’s beyond concerning,” he said.

Parent Donjala Smith-Thomas said she’s spent the summer playing the “waiting game,” trying to find out if a teacher trained to support students with disabilities will be there this fall to work with her son, a fifth-grader in Yazoo City schools. Her son has Asperger’s syndrome, and he struggled without full access to services this past spring. Even as the school makes a bid to return to normal, she feels like she’s losing the fight.

“I just know in my heart he may fall behind, based on what the school provides him,” Smith-Thomas said.

With school set to start in September, she wonders if new hires will have enough time to get their bearings, before students return. But at this point, a certified special education teacher facing a time crunch might be the best-case scenario.

$100 a day: The average pay for a substitute teacher

If Wright is unable to hire enough special education teachers, he could reassign some general-education teachers to inclusion classrooms, or, as a “last-ditch effort,” find educators on a temporary license.

Hiring educators with temporary licenses, which usually means they haven’t gone through a teacher training program, is already common in Mississippi and throughout the South. The school systems Wright oversees have some of the highest percentages of provisionally licensed educators in the state.

Last year, the superintendent tried to shore up such teachers’ skills with additional training, rather than leaving them to figure out how to serve some of the neediest kids in the state on their own. The district partnered with William Carey University to provide teacher prep courses in town, so teachers wouldn’t have to commute to the campus located almost three hours away.

This year, with distance learning, such efforts have become even more critical — and will prove even more consequential as students try to make up for missed time.

“We run the risk of our students losing more ground than gaining, if we don’t do this the right way,” Wright said.

Substitute teachers have long been a Band-Aid in school districts desperate for teachers, but relying on subs can be bad for student achievement and now could add unexpected headaches.

Still, many districts are asking staffing agencies like Kelly Education services to recruit more substitutes ready to work at a moment’s notice this fall. Nicola Soares, president of Kelly Education, said about 20 percent of its substitute assignments in 40 states last year filled full-time teaching vacancies. This summer, she’s seen a huge uptick in demand.

“We’re being asked to double if not triple the size of our talent pool just so the openings can be covered,” Soares said.

College students taking a gap year and unemployed workers looking to change careers have applied for the jobs. Soares said the national average for substitute pay hovered just below $100 a day, but some districts have increased their rates — even as they tighten budgets — to entice more temporary workers.

“Unless there’s a huge federal infusion of money — which there should be — districts will have to think about layoffs.”

Katharine Strunk, Michigan State University

Substitute teachers tend to have less training. In Nevada, substitutes only need 60 hours of college credit — not necessarily in education or the subject they’re teaching — to take the reins of a classroom. They also don’t receive paid sick days in many districts, so are often reluctant to stay home if they feel ill. And substitutes who move from school to school to cover for absent teachers could spread the coronavirus between buildings.

“You’re asking us to risk our lives for near-poverty wages,” said Valenzuela. “We don’t have sick days … I don’t know a single substitute who can go half a month without their pay.”

In May, Clark County officials considered raises of up to 30 percent for substitutes. But after the state cut millions from its K-12 budget, Superintendent Jesús Jara indicated that the district may reverse course. Substitutes have gone 17 years with no raise, he acknowledged. “It’s still a priority, but right now we’re waiting on the final numbers on the budget.”

Related: Can putting the least-experienced teachers in the highest-risk schools ever result in success?

In districts that are especially strapped for teachers, it’s not uncommon for recruiters to look overseas for help with their teaching vacancies.

Though their numbers total less than 10,000 nationwide, educators from other countries often fill classroom positions where shortages concentrate, including math, science and special education, said Lora Bartlett, an education professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who wrote “Migrant Teachers,” a book about how American schools import labor.

But recruiting for those positions came to a halt in June, when President Donald Trump suspended many worker visas through the end of this year, blaming competition for jobs during the recession.

“I’m praying really, really hard that they will really believe that teachers are essential workers and allow us to go there.”

Edna Posadas-Ingles, a special education teacher in the Philippines who had planned to teach in Nevada this year

Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak has pleaded for teachers to be exempted. His letter to the White House in July noted that Clark County had already extended offers to 95 foreign teachers. Eighty-eight of them would have filled special education vacancies.

“These teachers were scheduled to arrive in our State as early as this month and begin instruction in the upcoming school year,” Sisolak wrote. “However, unless immediate action is taken to exclude these teachers from the suspension, additional students will be deprived of licensed and highly qualified teachers.”

Edna Posadas-Ingles is one of the foreign teachers waiting to purchase a flight to Las Vegas. The 45-year-old has worked with students with disabilities for nearly two decades. She resigned from her position at a rural, private school in the Philippines after accepting an offer from Clark County. Her country’s stay-at-home order, now entering its fifth month, also prevented Posada-Ingles from finishing her doctoral program in special education.

She recalled the exact date — June 24 — when she learned of Trump’s visa ban and shared the news with her family of six.

“It really felt like my American dream was crushed right in front of me,” Posadas-Ingles said. “I couldn’t help but ask, ‘What does my future hold now?’ I felt so sad, so devastated. … Now I’m floating with no proper source of income.”

Still, she kept her thoughts on students in Clark County.

“The families of children with special needs are waiting for us,” Posadas-Ingles said. “I’m praying really, really hard that they will really believe that teachers are essential workers and allow us to go there.”

Just how many students will start the new school year without a fully licensed teacher remains unclear. Before the pandemic, education experts and civil rights activists had long expressed outrage that the kids most at risk of falling behind are more likely to be taught by inexperienced or untrained teachers. At the same time, many protested that high barriers for entering teacher preparation programs made it harder for states to recruit and train new teachers — especially people of color who are more likely to have graduated from high schools that did not offer challenging opportunities like advanced placement courses, or even have enough certified teachers for the classroom. The lack of strong instruction can derail candidates later as they try to pass exams required for entry to certain teacher prep programs.

Now 31 states, including Mississippi and Nevada, have loosened some assessment requirements for incoming teachers, in some cases permanently, to make it easier for teachers to get certified and to ease the hiring crunch to come.

Some schools of education in Mississippi saw an uptick in enrollment last spring after the state waived and then eliminated the Praxis Core, an exam measuring content knowledge in reading, writing and math, and ended the requirement that prospective teachers earn a score of at least a 21 on the ACT. More than 100 members of a summer alternate route teachers prep program at the state’s largest Historically Black College, Jackson State University, have already signed contracts to teach this semester, JSU administrators reported.

“You’re asking us to risk our lives for near-poverty wages.”

Fernando Valenzuela, a substitute teacher in Las Vegas

But even if more recruits start entering teacher preparation programs, they could end up with nowhere to go by next spring.

The country’s deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression has yet to hit most school districts, according to data compiled by the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University. Fewer than a third of the 302 districts Edunomics researchers tracked had issued pink slips as of mid-August, and the ones that had gone out were often for nonteaching positions.

But Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab, said teacher layoffs may dominate headlines over the next several months as districts spend down their cash reserves and states start axing their budgets.

“I actually think it could be as early as late fall — depending on when we get some clarity on federal money,” Roza said.

Related: How deep coronavirus school budget cuts are expected to harm student achievement

During the last recession, between 2008 and 2010, public schools shed more than 120,000 teaching positions, according to school finance expert Michael Griffith of the Learning Policy Institute. It would have been worse if the federal government had not extended nearly $100 billion in aid to schools: Another 275,000 education jobs could have been lost.

Griffith notes that K-12 budgets reached their lowest point in 2010 — two years after the recession began. This time, he said, the reduction in state education budgets could be much deeper. “Without the intervention of the federal government, hundreds of thousands of teachers could lose their jobs,” he wrote.

In Washington, D.C., talks over another federal relief package and how much money to include for schools remain mired in partisan debate. Senate Republicans have pitched $70 billion for K-12 public and private schools, with much of it tied to conditions that they physically reopen. Democrats in the House of Representatives, meanwhile, included $58 billion for schools in the HEROES Act they passed in May. (Later, in June, Senate Democrats unveiled a separate proposal with $175 billion to help stabilize K-12 schools.)

“I would like to think we could somehow find a way to avoid teacher layoffs … especially in the context of needing more adults to help with the major needs that kids will have when they come back,” said Katharine Strunk, a professor of Education Policy at Michigan State University. But, she added, “Unless there’s a huge federal infusion of money — which there should be — districts will have to think about layoffs.”

For now, more schools are trying another last resort when qualified teachers are hard to come by: virtual classrooms in which teachers use technology like webcams and other software to provide remote instruction. 

Long before the pandemic struck and shuttered schools, the Perry County School District in Alabama had begun to rely on remote learning to provide teachers for hard-to-staff subjects. John Heard, who stepped down as superintendent in June, said that in recent years the district had only one certified math teacher. So he arranged for students to watch live instruction from a certified teacher in another school district through video conference technology.

The arrangement, coordinated through a state-funded platform, had its strengths: The teachers were often talented and experienced, and unlike with pre-recorded lectures, students could ask their online teachers to slow down or repeat material. But Heard says the connections could seem forced. Students struggled to bond with a teacher they’d never met face to face and sometimes seemed reluctant to speak up.

“Kids are kind of timid about asking questions when you have a whole other group of people on the other end,” Heard said.  “They’re embarrassed … even though that teacher tries their best to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“We run the risk of our students losing more ground than gaining, if we don’t do this the right way.”

Jermall Wright, Superintendent of the Mississippi Achievement School District

This spring at Robert C. Hatch High School in Perry County, Amman Jordan, 17, learned U.S. History from a teacher working in another district. He reported to a computer lab and independently worked through assignments reading and answering questions. The teacher didn’t offer video calls.

“Doing that over the course of an entire semester was very draining,” Jordan said.

Although the instructor would occasionally send back notes with feedback on an assignment, Jordan said the experience couldn’t compare to classes he attended in person where teachers would come over to a student’s desk and offer critiques to “change this or that.”

Related: Teacher shortages force districts to use online education programs

But in districts with few options, a remote teacher beamed in from across the state may be better than even more impersonal — and often pricey — software programs. Before the pandemic, hard-to-staff schools were already turning to online education providers when they couldn’t find any teachers, although many programs don’t have a strong track record of boosting student achievement.

But now, more desperate schools are turning to digital teachers, and that concerns educators like Heard. The former superintendent wondered if more of his former students would have gone on to study science or math if they had received better exposure to those subjects.

Missed potential is the biggest loss, he said, when students don’t have a certified teacher in the classroom.

This story about teacher shortages was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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