NAACP: Pandemic, poor communication, technology laid bare Lexington school equity gaps

Oct. 30--The coronavirus pandemic has laid bare gaps in technology, opportunity and academics in Fayette County Schools between students of color and others, an NAACP of Lexington official said Thursday.

Families of color, already disproportionately impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, are having difficulties accessing information from the Fayette school district, according to Shambra Mulder, the education chair of the NAACP of Lexington, who hosted a virtual meeting.

Fayette school board chairwoman Stephanie Spires said board members want to fix that problem and also hope to offer next semester a revised NTI option for families who want to remain virtual but stay at their school. Spires said Friday such a program is in development. Fayette County also plans to offer in person learning five days a week for the first time since March and continue to offer the separate Virtual Learning Academy.

Thursday's NAACP virtual listening session was not aimed at pushing a return to full in-person learning in the midst of a COVID-19 surge.

Rather, questions from the NAACP surrounded whether students of color are getting equitable services through the at-home learning program NTI, through the Virtual Learning Academy and through "targeted services" as some Fayette students are returning to buildings for two hours on certain days.

The Virtual Learning Academy, the current non-traditional instruction (NTI) that most students are using from home and the limited in person targeted services are central to the "disparity, inequity, issues that we have," said Mulder:

Mulder said there are concerns that the achievement gap is widening during NTI. The percentage of Black students who were proficient in reading, math and science in 2019 was lower than any other race or ethnicity in Fayette County Public Schools, according to school district data. There has been shortage of Chromebooks and of internet access, and the quality of NTI has varied by school., Mulder said.

Instead of the Virtual Learning Academy accommodating families of color who had health concerns, the district's enrollment process for VLA "was quick, confusing, and inadequate" for many families to make an informed decision about enrolling in the program, a NAACP statement said.

Families had four or five days to decide and had little support from the district, the statement said.

At the listening session, which included Mulder, Spires, board member Tyler Murphy, the school board members were frank about their disappointment at how the school district had rolled out some services, including VLA.

"I was very disappointed with a lot of the way that this program was rolled out, the way it was introduced, the planning and preparation," Spires said of VLA.

She said she wants to explore why VLA did not initially have needed materials or Chromebooks as were promised.

Spires said she thought equity was a problem in the hybrid method of in-person learning that the board recently scrapped because some schools didn't have the capacity to carry it out.

"One of my frustrations is with the Friday afternoon surveys," sent to families asking what kind of learning they want, said Spires. After receiving the surveys, families couldn't get answers over the weekend, she said.

She said board members are continuing to discuss the district's communications problems with Superintendent Manny Caulk.

"Communication is something the five of us all agree needs to improve internally and externally," she said.

The NAACP is concerned because they are seeing new difficulties in learning for students who normally do well in school, a written statement from the NAACP presented during the meeting said.

Hispanic and Black students, students with disabilities, students learning English as a second language and students living in poverty may not be getting the information they need, Mulder said.

Mulder asked Spires and Murphy whether there was criteria for deciding who gets the in-person two hour targeted services. Each school council is deciding which students should be offered the two hour classes.

In providing the two hour targeted services, equity "has to be front of the mind," said Murphy.

Spires said delays in getting each student technology devices earlier in the semester put some kids behind academically and "it wasn't fair."

Meanwhile, Spires said teachers are quietly making extreme efforts to help families in the so-called gap groups. For some time, schools have been providing child care, health care in some cases, therapies, and meals. COVID-19 has put more of a strain on those services.

"Schools are doing it all. We need more help from the city, from non-profits, from private individuals --this system's going to break," she said.

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