West Harrison families decry school delay. ‘You’ve got the parents of 650 kids scrambling.’
How do you start the school year without a school?
That’s the question parents, students and staff have confronted after the Harrison County School District announced last week that the new West Harrison Middle School won’t be ready by Aug. 5, forcing 650 students to learn virtually, at home, for at least three to four weeks.
“You’ve got 650 kids, parents of kids scrambling,” Kristin Stachura Allen, a parent and one of about 50 people who attended the school board meeting Monday night, said during the public comment period.
“Well, what did y’all do with them in the summer time?” board member David Ladner asked.
“They went to camp,” one parent replied, who joined a chorus of voices answering Ladner’s question.
Among the concerns of West Harrison Middle School parents interviewed by the Sun Herald: Some parents will have to leave their children home alone while they work during the day. Others aren’t sure whether they’ll be able to travel to pick up the free meals that are available daily during a two-and-a-half hour window.
Above all, parents wondered why they were given so little notice—about three business days before the first day of school—when a casual drive past the West Harrison Middle School building left the impression that the facility was not ready, they said.
At the board meeting, Ladner said district leadership including Superintendent Mitchell King had hoped that the contractor, Wharton-Smith, was right when it said the building would be ready by July 15. When they moved their deadline to July 30 and insisted they’d meet it, district leaders took their word.
“We didn’t want to make a call until we knew what was going to happen,” Ladner said. “Maybe we did wrong.”
Wharton-Smith did not respond to a request for comment on Monday.
West Harrison Middle School Principal Dr. Natasha Williams asked parents to work with the school and remind their children that distance learning is temporary.
“West Harrison Middle School has been delayed, but we are not denied,” she said.
Construction delays caused by COVID, weather
The groundbreaking for the new middle school was held in November 2019. Built with funds from the 2018 bond issue, the $27 million facility aims to reduce crowding at North Gulfport and West Wortham middle schools.
But only four months after the groundbreaking, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted supply chains, upended labor markets and slowed work on the project.
South Mississippi’s weather, including Hurricane Zeta and other storms in 2020, played a role, too. In recent weeks, heavy rain for days on end prevented workers from finishing the asphalt and paving, drop-off canopies, sod and lights outside the building.
“Rain is killing us,” Marty Hardy, the architect who designed the building, said in an interview with the Sun Herald.
Williams said school administrators have been visiting the site daily for updates. As soon as they confirmed the building would not be ready for the first day of school, they started alerting parents, she said.
“Of course we could have assumed, but you never want to put information out when you don’t know if that’s going to be the outcome,” she told parents at the meeting.
Troubled track record with virtual learning
Last year, Harrison County approved a virtual learning option for students only after parents protested and state legislators got involved.
The virtual learning program, some parents interviewed by the Sun Herald said, was chaotic at best.
Allen, a vocal critic of the district and co-founder of the Facebook group Harrison County Parents for a Safer Return to School, said her sons’ class schedules were frequently rearranged without notice or explanation, and teachers rarely communicated with parents.
Jodie Wyrick’s son, who is set to attend West Harrison Middle School, also learned virtually last year. She said she was glad to have the option, but found that her son got little direct attention from teachers. He has an IEP (Individualized Education Program), but the accommodations he normally got at school, like extra time to complete assignments, never happened with virtual learning.
He ended up failing, and Wyrick blames the district’s approach to distance learning last year.
“The system failed him, in my opinion,” Wyrick said.
In an interview Friday, King said the last school year had shown virtual learning to be an imperfect substitute for in-class teaching.
“We found out last year, virtual doesn’t work as well as face to face, so we’re working as hard as we can and pushing as hard as we can,” he said.
Laptop pickup is set to take place for 7th graders on Tuesday and for 8th graders on Wednesday at the Harrison County Alternative School.
Internet issues
Compared to other parts of Mississippi, Harrison County has relatively high internet access rates, with about 98% of residents able to get internet of at least 25 mpbs, according to the website BroadbandNow.
But not all families can afford internet access at home, and some families in more rural parts of the county can’t get internet at fast enough speeds to support a student’s virtual learning needs, much less allow parents to work from home at the same time.
At the board meeting, Williams said paper packets will be available to students who need them. Parents can pick up packets on Monday, Aug. 9, at a location the school will announce. Staff hope to be working at the new building by then, but if not, packet pickup will take place at the district’s Center for Excellence.
Completed packets can be dropped off and new packets picked up on Monday for the duration of the virtual learning period, Williams said.
Debra Farley budgeted carefully to buy back to school clothes and supplies for her two kids. The internet options she’s looked at run at least $60 a month, plus extra costs for installation, and at this point, she can’t afford that.
“Had I have known at the beginning of summer, maybe I could have had time to prepare and we could have did something different,” she said.
Value of school meals
All Harrison County schools are offering free lunch and breakfast to every student this year, thanks to federal funding. To get their meals, students can go to one of the following distribution sites between the hours of 10 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. each day.
- North Gulfport Middle School Gym
- West Harrison High School Front Entrance
- West Wortham Elementary & Middle School Front Entrance
“The district has provided access and opportunity,” Williams said.
Elizabeth Slammans has two sons who are supposed to start at West Harrison Middle School. Like most teenagers, they’re “hungry all the time,” she said.
“We get food stamps, all of that, and sometimes we’re waiting for that day that we’re getting the food stamps,” she said. “We can always rely on, well I know they’ll eat at school.”
She’s not sure how often she’ll be able to pick up meals for them, because her family only has one car that her husband sometimes needs for work during the day.
Though King said on Friday that the district would notify parents via phone calls and emails as well as its website and Facebook page, four parents who spoke with the Sun Herald by Monday mid-afternoon said they had not gotten a call or an email.
“We started a call-out but we had a technical issue there, too,” King said at Monday’s board meeting.
Williams said parents should expect an update from the district by Wednesday.
Claudie Sellers had to ask for a day off from work with little notice so she could spend Thursday helping her daughter, who had already been sad to leave North Gulfport, get set up with virtual learning.
“Me being a single parent, you have to dot your I’s and cross your T’s and still have a backup plan after you dot your I’s and cross your T’s, cause things come up,” she said. “When it wasn’t done by the 15th they should have just implemented the backup plan and let parents know right then and there.”
For more information:
- Follow the Harrison County School District Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/HarrisonCountySchoolsMS
- Follow the West Harrison Middle School Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/whmshurricanes
