Forbes | August 14, 2020
By Jeanne Allen, Founder and CEO of CER

BOSTON – AUGUST 12: Families attend a Make Way for Education rally for in-person learning at the Massachusetts State House in Boston on Aug. 12, 2020. Parents and students protest to go back to school during the coronavirus pandemic. (Photo by Barry Chin/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

The push to reopen school reached a new level this week as mayors and governors on both sides of the aisle, as well as the president, began to push for physical school reopenings in the absence of “proof” that they cannot open safely. This is a major change from just last week, when most leaders were being intimidated by unions and other education associations into opening virtually only, but late.

The shift transcends political party allegiance, something rare in education debates in recent years.

While President Trump was taking the stage to promote physical reopenings at a White House event with parents, teachers and education leaders who agree, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy was making his case that schools must first demonstrate that they cannot open in person to be permitted to open strictly online. “There’s got to be a reason for it,” he said.

As Connecticut Democrat Ned Lamont told CBS’ Face the Nation last week, “I do not want a lost year. When everybody says, ‘Let’s not go back to school until it is perfectly safe, until we have a vaccine, until 100 percent of the people are vaccinated,’ I worry that could be a lost year of education.”

And Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo said the Warwick School Committee (the school board) “threw in the towel on kids” this week when they opted to start entirely remotely. “I could not be more disappointed in the vote that they took,” said Raimondo. She favors waiting until the final days of August and making a decision on 5 different data points before making any decision.

She’s right to do that. Educational experts, clinicians and doctors all agree that students need to continuously be learning to ensure their readiness and progress.

District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser recently acknowledged that “children are better served in their classrooms, with their teachers and their peers, and none of us know the impact of having our kids out of school for up to a year. We can guess, we can probably estimate. But I think we all know that it’s not ideal for learning, both academically and social and emotionally.” Despite that, the city is delaying in-person schooling for DC public schools until November 6th – putting many families in great distress.

It’s impractical and wrong to make policies on reopening the same for every community, as if Covid affected every street, school, town, and region in the same way. Policies can be made and resources directed to help based on the different needs and wants that each family has for their children.

“Instructional time, where students can connect with their teacher, is the most valuable resource the district has, but LAUSD is signing away over 7 million instructional hours,” Seth Litt, executive director of the local advocacy group Parent Revolution told the Los Angeles Times. Of the union’s demand that they work fewer hours online and not physically at all for sometime, Litt said, “This is a bad deal for students, and every (school) board member should vote no.”

The best solution for everyone is to create no one solution for all. It’s to encourage a vast array of solutions. Schools that understand this are putting parents first, making decisions based on their own student populations and using technology and innovative approaches to vary their offerings.

Take the Owl Labs’ cameras, which until now have largely been used for business meetings. Renaissance Charter School in Cooper City, Florida, a Charter Schools USA network school,  is using the Owl to create a more immersive, interactive experience for students, as well their instructors, utilizing features that don’t require a teacher to be tethered to their computer during instruction, as well as the capacity to more efficiently support instructional sessions in a hybrid setting, with a part in-classroom class successfully engaging with their peers learning remotely, in real-time.

The wide variety of educational options being afforded to parents can be seen particularly in communities where charter schools are well-established. The DC Public Charter School Board, the District of Columbia’s governing authority for charters, has a whole website that lists in detail what each school is doing, providing both transparency and understanding to the communities they serve.

While most are following the city’s model of virtual learning through November 6 – mainly because many DC families have kids in different kinds of schools and rely on public transportation which has been scaled back – others are using their flexibility to operate hybrids or opening in person. Meridian Public Charter School, I Dream Public Charter School, Perry Street Preparatory Public Charter School and IDEA Public Charter School are among the schools offering parents a choice. And while we all want kids to go back in person, the best decision that schools can make is to follow that model and offer parents options.

Contrary to what the president said this week – which is ironically similar to the point of view of teachers unions – virtual or remote learning can be incredibly effective for all sorts of kids and situations. But what schools did in March was anything but effective virtual education. It was crisis education, as the experts have argued, and because traditional education leaders have been critical and often antagonistic to virtual schools, they have not taken time to learn the power of online education, done well, nor ensure that teachers receive training to do so.

So, to put poor kids in a position of further disadvantage if their school has not yet mastered the art and science of virtual learning, basing those decisions on generalized conditions of communities or states, is bad policy and bad for kids. Whether and how schools reopen should be a school by school decision, predicated on the kinds of programs, quality and abilities (frankly) of the staff to deliver education effectively and safely to small groups in person or online.

A protestor plays the trumpet through the sunroof of her car as it drives in the Occupy City Hall Protest and Car Caravan hosted by Chicago Teachers Union in Chicago, Illinois, on August 3, 2020. – Teachers and activists hold car caravan all over the country on August 3, 2020 to demand adequate classroom safety measures as schools debate reopening. (Photo by KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI / AFP) (Photo by KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

Meanwhile national teachers union leadership continues to press for “guarantees” of safety prior to reopening to ward off strikes. They are also stepping up their political posturing to extract enormous and unrelated concessions in exchange for “consenting” to opening, like big tax hikes and moratoriums on more choices for kids.  It’s important to note that teachers unions do not have the legal authority to decide if schools open or teachers go back or not. What they have is the power of their labor contract to control teacher behavior. They are putting fear in their members,casting doubt on well-constructed plans and bracing them for walkouts. And that’s what has many governors fuming as they struggle with both educational effectiveness and public safety.

Following a one-size-fits-all mentality, Massachusetts unions are among those that have already succeeded in delaying school opening start dates and are now pressing local school boards to comply with their approach to how and when schools open. According to the Boston Globe, “Boston Teachers Union President Jessica Tang, in a statementlast week, rejected Boston Public Schools’ option for a mix of remote and in-person learning to start the coming school year, calling for ‘a phased-in return to any in-person learning only when all safety protocols are in place and verified.’” 

But where does that leave families, particularly those with lesser means, who not only do not have the adequate tools and resources to support their kids but the teachers who are also parents? Surveys suggest that most parents want their kids to return and increasingly the science suggests that the proper combination of social distancing, safety, using outdoors and a myriad of other suggestions from the CDC and medical professionals can protect the employees who are more at risk than children.

With infinite diversity of need, situation and talent, who and where students are matters, something that increasingly the nation’s leaders are appearing to recognize.

Follow Jeanne on Twitter or LinkedIn or some of her other work here. 

Forbes | August 20, 2020
By Jeanne Allen, Founder and CEO of CER

WINCHESTER – JULY 30: Young elementary school students and their parents attempt to get the attention of passing motorists on Church Street in Winchester, MA on July 30, 2020. A group of Winchester parents hold an event on the town common, voicing their concerns about younger students being able to learn remotely and advocating for the full return of them to classrooms. (Photo by Jim Davis/The Boston Globe via Getty Images) BOSTON GLOBE VIA GETTY IMAGES

They say a parent is a child’s first teacher, but that reality doesn’t seem to be guiding either policy or practice in these harrowing, back-to-school days, circa COVID-19.

Most parents will not be sending their children to a physical school this year, according to the latest data, but that’s not because they have any sufficient choice in the matter. To make matters worse, most parents whose options are confined to remote learning report they will also have no one at home to monitor and support their kids learning.

To add insult to injury, some districts are actually asking parents in that unenviable position to pay for child care.

Take Fairfax County, VA, where facilities are opening to provide child care and online support. Despite getting approximately $16,000 per student in the district, parents are being asked to pay for the privilege of utilizing public services.

It gets more bizarre. In Arizona, the teachers union staged a sick-out in two districts, refusing to go back to school physically or virtually.

“Due to these insufficient staffing levels, schools will not be able to re-open on Monday as planned. This means that all classes, including virtual learning, will be canceled. At this time, we do not know the duration of these staff absences, and cannot yet confirm when in-person instruction may resume,” Superintendent Greg Wyman said in a news release. “Please know that we are acutely aware of how polarizing this issue is, and how challenging these ongoing developments are for our entire community.”

Admitting per a leaked video that they are not allowed to strike or technically conduct a sick-out, a high paid union consultant just urged all members in those districts to stay home.

In California, where all schools will be remote-only until further notice with no district by district options for parents,  the state’s superintendent of public instruction said they’d permit only the opening of schools for students with special needs. “Small groups of those students will be allowed to convene in person regardless of their county’s status on the state watchlist, which mandates that schools remain closed,” the state’s Linda Darling-Hammond announced last Friday. “Many, many districts are prepared to offer small group settings even while schools are closed, in the way that child care settings are allowed to operate, with all of the rules… to be able to bring back in person those students whose needs are difficult to meet online and are much better met in person.”

It’s an admirable move, but how amateurs can support the needs of students with exceptionalities is curious. Darling-Hammond has spent a career arguing that only individuals with recognized forms of certification are qualified to be around students, regardless of their expertise.

As many have written and opined, the notion that teachers may not feel safe is perfectly legitimate, as is the very real concern for a child’s safety that parents have. But rather than throw away precious dollars on doing nothing, systems should be consulting parents about what they want and for their ideas, working to ensure that some way, somehow, they have the resources they need to keep education moving in their home or neighborhood.

The other issue California’s move raises is if it’s okay to have small group settings for students who most need it, why wouldn’t we make all buildings available for people who want to pull together small groups?

Parent experts argue that the only way to solve this issue is to give parents the power to develop or buy the education of their choosing. They want access to micro-grants to be used to provide technology and tutoring. As Families Empowered Founder and CEO Colleen Dippel reports, “parents sometimes lack the experience or technical skills to teach, but overall, parents have deep concerns about knowing what their kids have missed in the last 6 months. What they really want is options.”

Janelle Wood, Black Mothers Forum VOYAGE PHOENIX

The founder of Black Mothers Forum, in South Phoenix, AZ, Janelle Wood has seen first hand what is happening to special needs students during covid. “They have been completely neglected and overlooked because their parents don’t have access to the resources. But the parents should be given these resources so that children do not lose anymore. Parents want to bring those dollars into their homes and manage those dollars to give their kids what they need.” 

Wood, who is leading the charge locally to organize microschools argues that parents  “are the experts for our children. Education has pushed our voices out, but we’re paying for this. We are the power. We’re the taxpayers and we should be directing where the funds go. We felt powerless. But in the middle of this COVID situation, we have realized that we cannot go back to the way it was. We as parents need to take over this.” 

Her sentiment is reflected in many recent analyses and polling. According to distinguished fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation Michael Horn, “Low-income and minority parents are far more likely to prefer that their children do not return to school buildings until the pandemic has passed than their counterparts. For example, according to one survey, 64% of black parents want remote learning versus 32% of white parents. A majority of families making less than $50,000 want remote learning, whereas 27% of families making more than $150,000 feel the same way.”

That behavior is explained by National Parents Union founder and labor organizer Keri Rodrigues. “Parents are empowered with a lot of information on what they know about their kids and what they’re getting from the system or not. This is an eye-opening process for people. Parents are furious because they are seeing more now than ever before, how little our kids are getting.” 

Political leaders and districts, along with teachers unions are continuing to try to limit how schools operate, make demands, and threaten strikes all in the interest of equity.  But despite proclaiming otherwise, parents have not been part of these deliberations. 

As Ms. Rodrigues argues, “I don’t know how you would have a conversation about reopening and what we’re comfortable with without us. Instead of teachers acting like they are experts in infectious diseases, they should have been focusing on delivering equitable education – there was all this time to plan. It’s no wonder parents are losing trust.”

“Our parents will be far better at deciding what’s best for their kids and that money that they’ve spent as taxpayers ought to follow their kids at whatever school they want,” argues Families Empowered’s Dippel. Her group serves over 100,000 families, mostly Black and Latino, throughout Texas. “We’re seeing that that’s what parents want and we have a lot of confidence that they are going to do the right thing.”

The three all agree – returning students to schools that historically have not performed for them, says Dippel, is not the alternative. For them, “it is an economic imperative that we come out of this with a system that works better.”

The solution for parents stuck in one of these untenable conditions, say the experts, is clear; send the money home, through microgrants, to support the education families need to deliver on their own to their kids. 

“Instead of funding the context you want, you need to fund the context you have,” Rodrigues’ group is telling Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker. “You need to step up to the plate and get money to the folks in the neighborhood who are working collectively who are working to pull resources together because that is where the impact is happening.”

Some governors have begun to do just that. In South Carolina, Governor Henry McMasters awarded $32 million from CARES Act funding in the form of microgrants, approximately $6,500 to about 5,000 students. New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu awarded $1.5 million in scholarships for less advantaged parents to make choices. And Arizona Gov Doug Ducey distributed funds for innovations so that schools could develop programs to meet parents needs.

Unfortunately all of them, and more, are being challenged by groups representing the status quo, without consideration for what parents want.

Women won the right to vote 100 years ago this month, through their voice, protests and other relentless tactics. The Centennial Anniversary of Women’s suffrage is a great time to remember that women have driven a sea change in our society for every major challenge we’ve had. Perhaps it’s time they chain themselves once again to the fences outside the political gates where their witness will be cause for action.

Follow Jeanne on Twitter or LinkedIn or some of her other work here.