The New York Times
Missing for reopening of schools: Trust for black families
For Farah Despeignes, the choice of whether to send her children back to the classrooms in New York, as the coronavirus pandemic raged last fall, was not a choice at all. Despeignes, a black mother of two, watched in despair as her Bronx neighborhood was destroyed by COVID-19 last spring. She knew it would be a long time before she trusted that the country’s largest public school system could protect the health of her sons – and also her own. “Everything that has happened in this country over the past year has proven that blacks have no reason to trust the government,” including public school systems and her sons’ school building, said Despeignes, an elected parent leader on the local school board. who has taught at several colleges. Subscribe to The Morning Newsletter of the New York Times She added: ‘My mantra is,’ If you can do it for yourself, do not trust other people to do it for you. ‘Because I can not see for myself what is going on in that building, I will not trust anyone else to keep my children safe. “Even as more districts reopen their buildings and President Joe Biden joins the chorus of those who say schools can safely resume personal training, hundreds of thousands of black parents say they are not ready to send their children back. This reflects both the unequally harsh consequences the virus has visited non-white Americans and the deep lack of trust that black families have in school districts, a years-long phenomenon exacerbated by the pandemic. It also points to a major dilemma: the closure of schools has hit the mental health and academic achievements of non-white children the hardest, but many of the families who, according to education leaders, are most important in needing personal education are most wary of returning to stop. This shifts the reopening debate in real time. In Chicago, only about a third of black families indicated that they were willing to return to classrooms, compared to 67% of white families, and the city’s teachers’ union, which is on strike, has the inequality. a core part of his argument against personal classes. In New York City, about 12,000 more white children returned to the classrooms than black students, although black children made up a larger portion of the district. In Oakland, California, about a third of black parents said they would learn personally, compared to more than half of white families. And Black families in Washington; Nashville, Tennessee; Dallas and other districts also indicated that they would teach their children at higher prices than white families. Last summer, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 62% of white parents who strongly or somewhat agreed to reopen this fall, compared to 46% of black parents, although both groups expressed the same concern about the quality of their parents. children’s education. And several studies, including a new CDC report, have found that schools that take appropriate safety measures can reopen in communities with relatively low levels of coronavirus infection. Education experts and black parents say decades of racism, institutionalized segregation and abuse of black children, as well as serious underinvestment in school buildings, have left black communities in doubt that school districts are preoccupied with the risks. “For generations, these public schools have let us down and prepared us for prison, and now it’s like they’re preparing us to die,” said Sarah Carpenter, executive director of Memphis Lift, a parenting group in Tennessee. said. “We know our children have lost a lot, but we would rather our children not go to school.” Biden wants to increase virus testing and vaccinations, while urging Congress for billions of dollars to help schools reopen safely. He promised that racial equality would be a cornerstone of his coronavirus response. But the trust gap is not just limited to education; many black Americans are equally skeptical about the medical institution and are therefore more likely than white people to be mindful of the vaccination. Carpenter said black communities across the country are seeing people die out of proportion – she knows five people who died from the coronavirus, and recently a mother of five, including a three-week-old baby – is not enough. Although children were largely spared by the coronavirus, federal data released last fall showed that those who died or developed life-threatening complications were predominantly children of color. This trend has continued this year. “The numbers need to disappear so we can feel comfortable, and it does not look like they are going to disappear anytime soon,” Carpenter said. Such sentiments have changed the way millions of American children learn during the pandemic. A recent poll by Education Next, a journal published by Harvard University, found that low- and low-income black and Latino students were much more likely to receive full-time education than high-income white children. Black parents were 19 percentage points less likely to choose white pupils if the option was available. Latino parents were 8 percent less likely. That dynamic takes the form of what schooling will look like as the pandemic subsides. Some districts, including San Antonio, said they are likely to hold a version of distance education next year and possibly thereafter, due to demand from parents. And superintendents and educators are getting increasing pressure to finally confront the trust issue. “COVID-19 blew down the doors of our schools and the walls of our classrooms,” Sonja B. Santelises, principal of Baltimore City Public Schools, which began reopening in November, wrote in a recent opinion piece. “Our practices are no longer hidden behind doors or buried on the pages of policies and collective bargaining; they are now fully visible on a screen. She added: “And our parents are watching.” Sonya D. Horsford, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College, said the moment provides an opportunity for public schools to rethink what does not work for black children. “This is a great time to have the conversation about the source of mistrust and what we want as part of this recovery,” Horsford said. “Does it really just get kids back to school?” Thousands of black students have returned to the classrooms in recent months. Learned, especially many colored children were disastrous, and data showed that students fall behind in key subjects. It could undermine decades of work by local school districts and the federal government to reduce the performance gap between black and white students. In interviews, some parents said they feel they have little choice but to return their children to classrooms so they can work. Others said they could no longer tolerate their children struggling with online learning. Charles Johnson, a Brooklyn parent, allowed his son to return to high school last fall after his son pleaded guilty. After that, he attended one day before the city closed high schools indefinitely. “He hates distance education, oh wow, he hates it,” Johnson said. But Johnson, who has diabetes and other health problems, said he would not consider sending his child back. The risk feels too great. “As bad as I want the schools to be open,” he said, “I do not want him in the classrooms.” In many cities and districts, Latino and Asian American families are also less likely than white families to send their children back. Asian Americans opted for personal classes at the highest rate of any ethnic group in New York. Latino families in Chicago most likely said they would keep their children at home when schools reopened. The pattern is still the best and most pronounced among black families, who are particularly affected by decades of segregation, disinvestment and racism. According to one estimate, a gap of $ 23 billion, or $ 2,226 per student, distinguishes funding for predominantly white and non-white districts, and Jessica Calarco, a sociologist at Indiana University in Bloomington who studied reopening, said the pandemic had exacerbated inequality. “If you knew your school did not have hot running water, how would you feel about sending your child to that school knowing that they could not wash their hands before eating lunch?” she asked. Homeschooling among black families has been increasing for years, and Calarco said the pandemic could encourage more families to leave the public school system altogether. For some families, distance education provides some control over an education system that can often feel opaque: parents can see how their children are being taught and treated by their teachers. It has also allowed some children to escape hostile school environments to a large extent. Even while learning at home during the pandemic, black children are still subject to strict disciplinary practices and to cultivating interaction with school staff. And the one-time public health crisis has not stopped the routine traumas experienced by black students in schools. Last week, a video emerged from a high school in Florida, where some schools are open, in which a deputy sheriff strikes a girl down the sidewalk where she has apparently lost consciousness. Bernita Bradley, a longtime activist for public school families in Detroit, said the long-standing issues surrounding schooling did not change during the pandemic. Many black families still view the education system as a punishment – for example, the district has sent threatening emails about parents turning on their children’s cameras during virtual classes. In Detroit, 16% of black children returned to personal classes in the fall before schools closed again, compared to 27% of white children. White students make up only about 2% of the district. Recent surveys have shown that more Detroit parents were willing to consider personal learning when the city reopened schools this month. Bradley, who said she helped the Detroit school system investigate parents and connect with families during the pandemic, said the numbers show the generational trauma the community is suffering. “We have people who work 40 to 50 hours a week to keep the minimum, and they take care of four to five children,” she said. “It all comes from education.” Bradley, who is also a member of the National Parents Union, an organization that represents color families, said his parent surveys expressed concern about returning to the status quo. In August, Bradley helped a group of more than a dozen grumpy families create a homeschooling cooperative called the Engaged Detroit Home-Schooling Network. “Before the pandemic, we fought so much with schools over the special education plans, why this child or the one was suspended for 90 days without work, and why the graduation ceremony is so low,” Bradley said. She added: “The school system requires parents to be patient because it is a pandemic, but we have been told for years: ‘Give us time. ‘How many years are we going to hear that? This article originally appeared in The New York Times. © 2021 The New York Times Company