Harrison County changes traditional school opening plan after upset parents speak out
Harrison County School District will offer a virtual learning option after all.
The school board voted unanimously Friday afternoon to approve virtual learning for any family that wants it for the school year scheduled to begin Aug. 6. The vote reverses the board’s previous decision to restrict distance learning to families with a health concern related to coronavirus.
“When the decision was made ... it was stated that this was a fluid plan,” Superintendent Roy Gill said. “As we all know, things have changed.”
According to copies of the plan distributed at the special call meeting of the board, students who choose the virtual option must have access to a computer and internet, meaning the option will likely not be accessible to all families.
The district’s previous reopening plan was approved July 13. Many parents were furious at the lack of a virtual option and pledged to homeschool their children or send them to a district with virtual learning if Harrison County did not change course. By Friday morning, a petition asking for a virtual option had garnered nearly 4,000 signatures.
Parents reached out to state legislators to enlist their support in lobbying the district to reconsider. Gulfport Rep. Sonya Williams-Barnes said she had been inundated by calls from families in her district.
“The way that COVID has impacted the African-American community, it really concerned me,” she said in an interview before the meeting. “Knowing that a lot of African American grandparents are caring for school-age children, it really concerned me for them to not have any options.”
Williams-Barnes gave an impassioned speech at Monday’s school board meeting, where Superintendent Roy Gill largely defended the district’s plan.
Less publicly, Williams-Barnes and state Sen. Scott DeLano had numerous conversations with district leadership, urging them to offer a full distance learning option. The legislators also contacted state authorities to provide clarity on funding and regulatory issues that the district had believed were barriers to a virtual option.
DeLano said that Harrison County had been concerned about acquiring the supplies, including software and hardware, it would need to offer virtual learning. Regulations on procurement processes and funding uncertainties had to be addressed with information from the state.
“I called a school board member and said, what are your challenges?” DeLano said. “When they started laying out those challenges, I said, ‘OK, well let me go get you an answer.”
After the board voted, Williams-Barnes said she was concerned about the lack of accommodations for families who don’t have internet or a computer. Many households include several students, and it’s unlikely that each of them will have their own computer to use for hours every day.
Williams-Barnes said she spoke with Gill after the meeting and he said he didn’t have the computers to guarantee one for each child in need.
“To me, that is an infringement on a child’s right to be educated in the Harrison County School District,” she said.
She pointed out that other districts, like Pass Christian, provide computers and internet access to every student for virtual learning.
“If they can prepare, then we should be prepared,” she said.
A statewide dilemma
The move came just a week before the deadline for districts to send their reopening plans to the Mississippi Department of Education. In recent days, some school districts around the state, such as DeSoto and Madison counties, have announced they will delay the start of the school year.
The decision by the Coast’s largest district, which serves some 15,000 students, may increase pressure on other local districts to offer virtual learning to any family who wants it. Gulfport, Biloxi, Pass Christian, Moss Point and other districts already do, but Long Beach is restricting distance learning to students with medical concerns.
With the start of the school year now less than two weeks away, outbreaks of COVID-19 have been reported among employees of Jackson County schools and at a theater camp at the Lynn Meadows Discovery Center. The cases illustrate how difficult it will be to contain COVID-19 without shutting down if — and more likely when — an outbreak occurs at a school.
A CDC document obtained by the New York Times said that the “full sized, in-person classes” anticipated by the districts without a full virtual learning option fall into the “highest risk” category for the spread of COVID-19.
Kristin Allen, a Harrison County parent who advocated for a virtual option, said that she hopes Harrison County’s decision helps other districts recognize that it’s possible to change their reopening plans in response to community feedback.
“If you involve your parents, you can achieve anything if you put your mind to it,” she said.
At least 60 people attended the meeting, which had been announced less than 24 hours earlier and started at 3 p.m.
But there’s still much work to be done. Harrison County initially rejected virtual learning because the sprawling district has areas with limited broadband internet access. Unlike other districts, Harrison County has less preexisting infrastructure for virtual learning: Biloxi, for example, has long provided Chromebooks to students.
Allen said she hopes that Gov. Tate Reeves will announce a statewide delay to the start of the school year.
“If he delays school, that’ll give time to train our teachers properly, get familiar with the system, and incorporate virtual learning for everyone in the event that we do get shut down,” she said.
This story was originally published July 24, 2020 at 3:36 PM.
