Coronavirus Closes Schools for Half of All Kids In the U.S., Now What?

"The last time we had a lot of cities closing down was during the Spanish influenza," says Linda Darling-Hammond, education professor at Stanford University and president of the Learning Policy Institute. "This is, in our lifetime, a pretty unique experience."

Millions of children and their families awoke to a new reality Monday, as governors ordered the closures of all K-12 schools in 33 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, and several big cities where governors had yet to force state-wide closures that shuttered their school systems - like Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, and New York- closed on their own.

According to Education Week, which has been tracking closures in real-time since last week, at least 64,000 schools enrolling 32.5 million students are closed, scheduled to close or were closed and later reopened.

That's more than half of the 51 million students in public schools across the U.S., according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

"This will be interesting to figure out," Darling-Hammond says. "Some of it will be challenging and problematic. I wouldn't say we are going to figure it out in a perfect way. But I think in a year from now schools will be in a different place with respect to where and how kids will do their learning."

But for the millions of students and their parents, what happens now?

Most of the questions surrounding school closures are driven by concerns about equity issues and land in three buckets: How will students who count on school for breakfast and lunch continue receiving those meals? How will students keep up with their coursework at home, or will they at all? And how flexible will state and federal officials be when it comes to schools not meeting academic requirements as a result of the pandemic?

"Whenever schools are closed and education comes to a halt, low-income students suffer disportionately," Richard Kahlenberg, director of K-12 equity at The Century Foundation, says. "They may go hungry if they are cut off from school meals, and they may be endangered if their parents have to work and they are left alone."

"Their learning also suffers more than that of other students," he says, underscoring how a long line of research has found that during summers off, the reading skills of middle-class kids typically continue to develop, while low-income students, on average, suffer a setback.

"School closings during the year just compound this problem," Kahlenberg says.

As more states and school districts announce system-wide closures that span weeks at a time, education advocates are most concerned with how the 22 million students who qualify for free breakfast and lunch at school will continue to receive those free meals. Some schools established grab-and-go style meal centers at specific locations throughout their districts while others are still mulling delivery options, especially for medically fragile students.

The Cleveland Metropolitan School District, for example, which is closing for three weeks, is providing two meals a day at 22 sites across the city for children under the age of 18, whether they attend district schools or not. School districts in Washington state plan to use their bus drivers to deliver meals.

The Department of Agriculture gave Washington state, California and others the ability to provide free meals on their summer schedules, and officials from the department said that they would approve within 24 hours any state or district that also wanted that option.

When it comes to academics, some school districts are shifting their instruction online, sending students home with devices and schedules for times to log on, along with directions for parents to help them stay on top of assignments.

Northshore School District, one of communities hardest hit by the coronavirus about thirty minutes outside Seattle, canceled school March 5 in order to train teachers how to effectively provide online instruction. Monday marks the start of their second week of online instruction.

The reality for the majority of public school students, however, is that online learning isn't an option. Not only do an estimated 12 million students lack internet access at their homes, but many also don't have parents who can afford to stay home from work to help them. That's to say nothing about compatibility for students with disabilities or for those who don't speak English, as well as the varying levels of knowledge and ability among teachers to make online instruction effective.

FCC commissioners called for emergency measures to bring broadband access to low-income communities amid school closures. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai told internet providers to expand their broadband programs for low-income families and establish programs for low-income families if they don't already have them in place. He also urged them to relax data cap policies.

Comcast announced that it will increase its bandwidth speeds for all customers beginning Monday and provide 60 days of free internet services to new families - though some terms and conditions may prevent people from accessing the free internet offer.

For those reasons, among many others, most districts and states are sending students home with prolonged homework assignments on paper.

Schools in Baltimore, Maryland and Newark, New Jersey, for example, gave students work packets that cover two to three weeks of course material and are available in a handful of different languages and modified for students with disabilities.

Schools in Los Angeles, the country's second-largest school district which closed starting Monday until further notice, are suddenly the country's biggest test-case for how major school systems with lots of poor students can close while still ensuring the safety of the most vulnerable students.

Schools in L.A. serve 620,000 students, 72% of whom qualify for free or reduced price lunch.

"People have been working at this for some time," Los Angeles Unified School District superintendent Austin Beutner said. "This is not the first disaster of some sort that this district and those in our school have had to deal with, but this is different and this is uncharted waters."

School board officials said that about 40 schools will be converted into resource centers to provide special education services, meals and child care for parents who cannot remain home with their children, like health care workers and emergency personnel. Free transit to the designated centers will be provided by the city's metro system.

In anticipation of the closures, Los Angeles schools partnered with a public broadcasting company so that students can access classes and instruction on their televisions.

"I don't have a crystal ball," Beutner said. "I don't think any of us know what the coronavirus will bring us in the days and weeks ahead."

The unprecedented circumstances have school officials across the country wondering what state and federal requirements they'll be held to given the severe interruptions the virus has caused at one of the most important moments during the school year.

Education Department officials said that they anticipate receiving increasingly complicated requests for waivers to release affected schools from certain federal requirements, like reporting chronic absenteeism rates or potentially not administering an annual end-of-year state exam.

Education Department officials said they expect states to "make every reasonable effort" to administer annual tests but that they are open to considering one-year waivers.

Meanwhile, Congress is working to provide relief where it can. The U.S. House of Representatives passed an emergency funding bill that would, among other things, cover lost wages for parents who have to stay home with their children.

Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington, introduced a bill last week that would provide federal funding to ensure early childhood programs remain open so that parents can work, to help school districts plan for closures, including how to provide meals and technology to students who need it, and to cover costs associated with deep cleaning schools and buses.

"As the coronavirus continues to spread - and schools continue to close - many students, teachers and staff are frightened and searching for answers," said Murray, whose home state has been one of the hardest hit. "Across the country, schools are preparing for temporary closures, students are wondering how they'll receive vital services, educational facilities need to be cleaned, college students need help finding food and housing, and early education programs need help remaining open and staffed."

For now, most of the onus is placed on school superintendents who have been taking the lead to ensure their school community is on the same page, in many cases trying things for the first time. Some, for example, created public Google Docs where parents can write down questions they have, which are then answered in real time. Others shared on social media lists of education technology companies making their software and programming free.

"We're going to learn a lot," Darling-Hammond says. "It's not going to be like magic fairy dust, but we're going to learn a lot about how to do distance learning."