DC's Toughest Start of School Ever
Our parents, students, and teachers in DC just faced the toughest first day of school ever.
After nearly an entire summer of silence, Mayor Bowser announced on July 30 that students would continue school virtually to begin the fall semester. It is hard to understand why this seemingly inevitable announcement came so late, and even harder to understand why the DC Public Schools system was so unprepared.
Five months after the abrupt transition to virtual learning, many students still don’t have laptops and internet access. Teachers still don’t have a curriculum adequately specialized to virtual learning. There is still no proper student attendance system.
You don’t have to be an emergency planner like I am to see that leaders at the highest levels of the DC government failed our children. And that includes a failure of oversight by the DC Council.
One DC teacher had to use FaceTime to communicate with his students and even gave away his personal laptop to a child who had trouble accessing lessons online. He told DCist that only ten percent of his students logged in consistently. On the first day of school, the DCPS’ tech support hotline received a reported 3,000 calls. Many went straight to an automated voicemail and many calls remained unreturned.
DCPS could have avoided confusion and delay by simply providing a laptop to every student. Instead, it devised an unsuccessful process for determining what technology to purchase and how to distribute it to the students who need it, including an online-only survey asking who doesn’t have online access. The survey found 60 percent of students lacked adequate technology at home.
As vice-chair of my Capitol Hill Advisory Neighborhood Commission, we provided $45,000 in grants to multiple organizations, some of which are working to supply DC students with laptops and hotspots. Our community came together to help when our government couldn’t. But we shouldn’t have had to.
In early August, Deputy Mayor for Education Paul Kihn promised me and ANC commissioners I convened from across the city that our students and teachers would have what they need to be successful.
It’s time for some accountability.
The DC Council did not provide the necessary oversight of the agencies responsible for this failure. It’s the Council’s job to demand answers now.
As a Council member, it will be my top priority to oversee that virtual schooling is successful. I will hold hearings to investigate the structural causes of this failure and demand that our schools better serve our children and families for virtual learning and, later, in-person learning. As an emergency planner, I will demand immediate and effective planning for a return to in-person schooling.
The pandemic has changed everything, but we can’t afford to risk an entire generation’s education.
We need leaders who take care of our children. The future of DC is in their hands.