Three young Cleveland entrepreneurs saw a need during the pandemic and
created a
business
to address it.
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“The hours
employers demand
and
public school schedules
have always been incompatible. While children attend K-12 public schools for an
average of 1,195 hours per year
, a full-time working parent averages twice as much time, about 2,450 hours per year, working and commuting. This fall, it looks like
millions of U.S. children will spend no hours at school
at all. And for nearly every parent, the usual complicated dance between their jobs and their kids’ daily schedules has become even more complex, as
school systems
adjust their plans in accordance with what’s possible during the COVID-19 pandemic…The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed parents’ delicate, very difficult and unsustainable balancing act. This complex crisis offers a time of reckoning. Americans have an opportunity to re-imagine how the government can support family life – to make raising children less expensive, less stressful, more socially just and simply better for everyone.”
-Taryn Morrissey, Associate Professor of Public Administration and Policy at American University's School of Public Affairs, writing for
The Conversation
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The amount of federal CARES Act money that the city of Columbus is giving to Columbus schools to purchase
20,000 Chromebooks
for students to use for online learning, according to the Columbus
Dispatch
.
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Columbus City and Columbus City Schools
The City of Columbus is using
$7 million
in federal CARES stimulus money to provide laptops for 20,000 of the district’s students. As for the district’s reopening plans, a recent surge in case numbers has prompted Superintendent Dixon
to suggest
that initial plans to partially reopen in person may not come to fruition.
Ohio’s reading guarantee
A bill
introduced
this week would eliminate the requirement that students be retained after failing to pass the state’s third-grade reading guarantee (or otherwise be exempted). It also would seek a waiver from the feds regarding the federal requirement for the assessment, at least for the next school year.
Federal updates
Several Ohio leaders, including Reps. Marcia Fudge and Joyce Beatty, are pushing Congress to adopt a “poverty bill of rights,” which Cleveland.com explains
here
.
Joe Biden has released a
$775 billion proposal
that would pay for child care and elder care as well as universal preschool. Meanwhile, Congress continues to discuss a bill that would provide $50 billion to stabilize national child care funding and prevent widespread closures. The
Child Care is Essential Act
was introduced in late May.
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New York City’s mayor announced last week that the city will provide
100,000 free child care slots
for children ages 3 through 8th grade when schools reopen (1-3 days a week) in September. The free slots are an attempt to provide relief to working parents who can’t stay home or can’t find child care for the remote learning days.
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Ohio’s Office of Early Learning and School Readiness Head Start Collaboration Project has launched a kindergarten initiative worth checking out. Called “Heading to Kindergarten,” the initiative will build partnerships between Head Start and public schools in order to support successful transitions to kindergarten. The Heading to Kindergarten project will provide resources, professional development, and technical assistance aimed at improving connections between Ohio Head Start programs and their receiving elementary school in districts across the state.
V
isit the webpage
.
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Here’s a
good read from
NYT
on the relentlessness of “pandemic parenting,” with interesting survey data suggesting that parents feel increased pressure this summer for parent-led, more programmed activities for children – likely because of fears about lost learning time in school. While we don’t want to underplay the very real fears about children falling behind (especially children who have been historically underserved), it also seems worth a reminder that other (non-strictly-academic) learning is important, too. Think: learning to get along, gardening, imaginative play, grappling with boredom, chores or housework, caring for pets, cooking, and other life skills.
The 74 Million has several info-packed reads about homeschooling – a topic that many of us are thinking about/have been forced to think about lately:
On school reopening
: NPR
covers
a
new report
from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine which urges districts to prioritize grades K-5 and students with special needs when considering the return to full-time, in-person classes. Dr. Dimitri Christakis, pediatrician and an author on the report, said this is because these two groups generally struggle the most with online learning and need the most supervision.
Education Week
has a useful
tool
tracking school reopening plans from a sample of districts across the country. As of July 23, 9 out of the nation's 15 largest school districts are opting for remote learning for the upcoming school year. Meanwhile, Cleveland.com
raises important questions
and points regarding not just contact tracing and cleaning procedures, but how to prevent stigma among children who end up testing positive for COVID.
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The Hechinger Report offers a
g
ood review
of the research on book giveaway programs, like Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library – which recently expanded to Ohio, led by First Lady Fran DeWine. While many studies have been conducted and on many different programs, one takeaway from the research is that parental tips for reading, or “nudges/supports” are critical. Harvard’s James Kim said it well: “Books are not a causal mechanism. Reading books and shared reading is the mechanism that leads to better skills. Books are just the resource that facilitates these literacy processes.”
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This edition written by: Jamie Davies O'Leary, Associate Director of Policy and Caitlin Lennon, Communications & Policy Specialist
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