Markithia Haynes is a single mother working five days a week, and she is glad Clayton County Schools has remained all virtual since the academic year began last August.
Although she had to scramble to find a daycare program that could oversee her son’s online learning, Haynes said the coronavirus has made in-person education too risky — especially in communities of color where the disease has been disproportionately deadly.
“I can’t have my child going to school where there is not a guarantee that he is going to be safe,” she said. “Children, we all know, they’re going to take their masks off, they’re going to talk, they’re going to lick their fingers, they’re not going to wash their hands.
“Who’s going to help keep them accountable of all these things.”
Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@ajc.com
Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@ajc.com
Despite pushes throughout metro Atlanta to get kids back in the classrooms, Clayton County school leaders say they are standing firm on remote-only education. The south metro community has a high percentage of Black and Latino residents already at higher risk of contracting COVID-19 because of frontline jobs in retail, healthcare and hospitality.
“We have decided to take a very measured, data-driven approach to our decisions,” Clayton County Schools Superintendent Morcease Beasley said. “We understand that some districts are opening up. But we also know that while they say they are open, many of the families decided that their children will remain at home and participate virtually.”
Flying solo
Clayton’s stance is winning praise from residents as neighboring metro communities — DeKalb County Public Schools in particular — have been embroiled in pitched battles over opening schools to students, often along racial lines.
While Clayton and DeKalb school systems are both about 80% Black and Latino, Clayton does not have a vocal white population like DeKalb that has pushed it to offer in-class instruction while its Black residents have advocated remote learning.
“I’m a parent of a kindergartner and a fourth grader in Clayton County and I can’t say enough about how remaining virtual has given me peace of mind,” said Clayton County parent Shanna Miles. “I know my kids aren’t exposed, their teachers are safe. And without all the back and forth of will we/won’t we return of other districts, we’ve been able to establish a virtual school routine.”
Rashawn Ray, a fellow of governance studies at the Brookings Institution, said communities of color are often more likely to have had loved ones die because of the impact the pandemic.
“For people of color, the question is ‘Are your love ones going to be alive?’” he said. “Because we know a lot of people who aren’t.”
But there are risks to not offering any face-to-face education, experts said.
Normally a substantial change such as wide-scale remote education would require two or three years of studies to demonstrate what works and what doesn’t. But because the pandemic was an emergency, virtual learning is a living laboratory.
“This not only is completely changing mediums of learning, in a lot of ways the technology and infrastructure had to catch up really fast and they are still working on it,” said Jennifer Darling-Aduana, as assistant professor of learning technologies at Georgia State University.
Social bonds
Elementary school children also develop socialization skills better in a classroom than on a computer screen, said Latasha Adams, an assistant professor of teacher education at Clayton State University. Learning how to collaborate or form friendships on the playground in a real-world setting is invaluable.
Losing that, combined with the subject matter loss that some educators are calling “the COVID slide,” can set back students for years.
“What we need to do this summer is make sure that we are training our teachers so that they have the strategies and the skill sets available to hit the ground running in August,” Adams said. “Because we’re going to have to diagnose our students to know where they are academically and in terms of social-emotional health.”
That will be especially true in Black and Latino students. A McKinsey & Company study in December determined that students of color could be falling behind in core subjects such as math by as much as a year because of a lack of face-to-face contact with teachers.
Kaylie Ramsey opened Ms. Kay’s Academic Solutions in Stockbridge last year for working parents who needed a place for their children to learn remotely. The business has been a success and with 14 students, including Markithia Haynes’ son.
Virtual learning can work, but it doesn’t work for every single student,” said Ramsey, a former teacher, who checks the student’s temperatures three times a day, requires masks be worn at all times and has designed the space to meet social distancing guidelines.
“I have students who actually have all A’s and B’s,” she said. “But I also have a student who was an A-B student while in school, but here in virtual learning they are not doing their best. That is because of the emotional effects this pandemic has caused.”
Superintendent Beasley said he gets it. While the district has not allowed in-school learning, he is hopeful it’s in the school system’s future.
“We will remain virtual until the vaccine rollout is more equitable for communities that are hard hit like a Clayton County and when the data reflects that the vaccine is working, we will make a decision to return to face to face sooner than later,” he said.
About the Author
