Harrison County parents protest at school board meeting over COVID plan. ‘We’re stuck.’
Like many parents across the country, Vanessa Reed is not willing to send her five boys back to the classroom at this point in the coronavirus pandemic. She wants them to learn at home instead.
But the Harrison County School District isn’t helping her or other families obtain laptops. The internet company that was supposed to install high-speed Wi-Fi on July 31 told her they actually won’t be able to come until Aug. 20. Her family relies on her husband’s income as a maintenance man at an apartment complex, and there’s no way she will be able to get five devices — one for each child, as the district requires — by Aug. 6.
“We’re stuck, and school starts in a couple of days,” Reed said.
Reed, who is Black and Native American, feels like the district failed to take into account families like hers. She and other parents gathered in protest outside of the district’s school board meeting Monday evening.
Greg Whitfield, who organized the demonstration, said the decision to limit virtual learning to students with their own device and internet will particularly hurt Black families.
“It does affect the poor white community, but disproportionately the African American community,” said Whitfield, a minister and father of a second-grader in the district.
According to data from the 2018 American Community Survey, 36% of Black families with kids under the age of 18 are living below the poverty line in the Harrison County district, compared to just 7% of white families.
That means more Black families and caregivers have had to choose between sending children back on the first day of school Thursday, where they could get sick, or keeping them at home and scrambling — and praying— to obtain the equipment needed for virtual learning.
Whitfield and other parents at the demonstration, including some who have chosen to send their kids back to class in person, want the district to delay the start of the school year, like Moss Point and Bay St. Louis-Waveland have already done.
“That would just give some time to make those orders, allocate that money to the right place, to benefit our children and give them all an equal opportunity,” Whitfield said.
Disproportionate effects of the pandemic
The stakes seem all the higher because the virus has hit Black communities hard nationwide. In Harrison County, Black people have suffered 33% of all COVID-19 cases, but comprise just 26% of the county’s population. (The racial breakdown of deaths from COVID-19 in the county has been more proportionate.)
During the board meeting, John W. Davis Jr., pastor of Faith Missionary Baptist Church in Gulfport, urged the board to delay the school year and begin classes virtually. He represented a network of African-American pastors from across the Coast who are concerned about the likely effects of reopening district schools. Before speaking, he handed each board member a yellow folder containing letters from other pastors.
One, written by Rev. Allen Jenkins of First Missionary Baptist Church in Bay St. Louis, described the unequal effects of COVID-19.
“In Mississippi, African Americans account for only 38 percent of the population, but account for 52 percent of COVID cases,” Jenkins wrote. “When COVID-19 does not affect African Americans to the same degree, why does not the Harrison County School District’s Reopening Plan take this into account?”
The board took no action to revise the district’s reopening plans. But before adjourning, Rena Wiggins, school board president, said she anticipated “a lot of conversations” in the coming days.
“We hear you,” she said. “We understand the concerns, and we thank y’all for coming to voice them.”
$4.4 million in CARES Act funding
When Harrison County first approved its reopening plan in mid-July, it opted for a traditional school year.
At the time, some other districts on the Coast had announced virtual learning would be an option for any family that wanted it. Districts like Gulfport, Pass Christian, Moss Point and others also said they would provide students with everything they needed for virtual learning, including Chromebooks and internet hotspots.
After an outcry from parents, Harrison County’s board took care of the first issue, voting July 24 to allow any family to choose virtual learning.
But the board’s decision did not address the issue of access. To participate in virtual learning, each family would have to provide internet and one device per student, because all students will be required to be online for the length of a regular school day.
State Rep. Sonya Williams-Barnes, who has attended school board meetings to speak out for virtual options, said she was deeply disappointed when she learned of the requirements.
“There may not be a lack of concern for educating students, but there seems to be a lack of concern for students that are in need,” Williams-Barnes said. “I don’t think the district properly assessed the children that they teach.”
Gulfport city leaders found Harrison County’s virtual learning plan so inadequate that they have asked the Gulfport School District to waive the $1,500 tuition fee for students who live in Gulfport but are zoned to Harrison County schools. Gulfport is providing devices and hotspots to students who need them.
Harrison County says it doesn’t have the resources to do that. The district serves some 15,000 students. District public relations specialist Trang Pham-Bui said that of the roughly 4,500 families that responded to a survey about internet access this spring, 398 reported they had no internet access at home.
If that proportion holds true across the district, nearly 10% of families don’t have internet.
The district has been allocated nearly $4.4 million in federal CARES Act funding, which can be used to buy technology for virtual learning, PPE and other supplies. Over the summer, the Board voted to use some of the money to buy 750 new laptops for teachers.
In the last few weeks, the district has moved to obtain more laptops for students. Wiggins said the district is planning to use a state grant and matching funds to buy thousands of laptops. But it will take months for all of the devices to arrive.
“The big problem is the timeline,” said Wiggins. “Every school district in the country is trying to get their hands on devices. I believe the state has already taken action to speed that up. They’ve ordered a huge sum of devices.”
‘Safety comes before anything’
The big problem is the timeline for families like Vanessa Reed’s, too. It was only in the last two weeks that she learned what the district is planning, and only in the last few days that she’s gotten confirmation from her kids’ schools that they won’t be providing devices or internet access.
If she had had more time, she believes, she might have been able to get the equipment needed.
Alexa Seymour, a parent of four kids in the Harrison County School District, said obtaining multiple laptops or tablets on short notice is a big ask at any time, but especially now.
“You gave people two weeks’ notice, we’re in the middle of a pandemic, and on top of that, all those families who receive unemployment, their unemployment just ended,” Seymour said.
The family now has devices for three of the kids: one they had already, one they purchased, and one sent from Seymour’s mother in West Virginia. They’re still working on getting the fourth, but Seymour and her husband decided early on their kids would either “go virtually or the truancy officer would come get us.”
“We are in a lower-income community,” Seymour said. “It kind of feels like, they’re like, ‘This is the option. You can have what you need, and we gave you a week and a half notice to get it, or you can risk sending your child to school, and risk infection.’”
Another option for distance learning in Harrison County is the homebound program, which allows participants to pick up paper packets from their school. But that program requires a note from a doctor, and not all families have a specific medical concern driving their desire for distance learning.
For Reed, the thought of one of her kids becoming ill is terrifying enough. Young children are less likely to suffer serious consequences from the virus, but they can still get sick and even die.
“My children’s safety comes before anything,” Reed said. “You can’t bring a child back from the dead. You can’t.”
