Strange new year: This is what it takes to get all families learning, thriving

With Labor Day behind them, the rest of the area’s school districts leapt into a most daunting school year this week.

Even with so much preparation, parents and teachers knew that, collectively, their school community would need to help children — and each other — navigate the anxious first steps of remote learning.

“We’ll come to your house,” LINC’s Caring Communities Coordinator at Trailwoods Elementary, Melanie Scott, told an anxious Kansas City parent over the phone opening day.

“Are you serious?” said the parent, who was overwhelmed trying to sort out the technology demands of district-issued devices and online lesson platforms for multiple children.

“Yes,” Scott said, referring to herself and bilingual lead staffer Mayra Hernandez. “We’ll come to your house.”

LINC welcomed back children — safely distanced and masked — to its Caring Communities after-school program at Topping Elementary in the North Kansas City School District Tuesday.

In-person classes opened for elementary children in the North Kansas City and Fort Osage districts, while classes opened all-online in other districts, including Kansas City and Grandview — joining districts like Hickman Mills and Center that had opened all-online in late August.

Find links to school tech help and other community assistance at kclinc.org/help.

It was opening day for LINC, too, at Topping Elementary in the North Kansas City district, where LINC provided before- and after-school programming for children returning to in-person learning at their school.

“It was a good day,” said LINC Caring Communities Supervisor Jeff Hill, after visiting Topping. “Kids were happy and safe . . . the logistics went well.”

Just like at Topping, LINC “will be there,” Hill said, when other partner school districts bring children back into their buildings.

Where schools have started the year all on-line, LINC’s team has stepped in to join teachers and administrators to help children thrive as remote-learners.

In many cases, this meant that LINC’s site coordinators sat in on staff meetings — virtually and in-person — learning the technology strategies, identifying families that needed extra help or who have been difficult to contact.

It meant making the persistent phone calls, checking in on parents and children, whether familiar faces or new to the school. Many site coordinators are ordering children’s books through LINC’s connection with First Book so they can help encourage reading at home.

“Some of the parents are so stressed,” said Deanna Snider, LINC’s Caring Communities Site Coordinator at Carver Dual Language Elementary School in KCPS.

Snider went along with Carver teachers to visit families’ homes before opening day to deliver lesson packets and workbooks they needed for the school year. At each stop, they checked on how the family was doing, looking for other needs.

Examples of the school supplies for some Carver families

Some families lacked school supplies, so Snider packed boxes with pencils, scissors, glue sticks, notebooks and other materials that she will deliver to several families this week.

The first day of school, one of the parents called Snider, “so frustrated,” Snider said, “she was on the brink of tears.”

One child was on one online platform, another on a different one. There was only so much explaining that could be done over the phone, so Snider said she would come to her house.

They went over the logistics of being safe. Planning for masks and distancing.

It’s necessary work carried on by LINC staff in tandem with the districts’ support staff, hoping to see families and their children thrive.

“We sat in on all the grade-level meetings (with teaching staff),” Scott said at Trailwoods, “so we can give families good information.”

The school districts’ administrators, support staff, and teachers have prepared throughout the summer with their families. And many community partners rallied to help, providing funds for computers and tech support, boosting nutrition programs, donating school supplies.

Some families were going to need extra help. Inevitably there would be some scrambling to patch holes in the school districts’ massive online-learning nets.

But Scott joined the messages ringing from schools and across the first day of school in person and in social media posts when, after taking in all the community effort to this point, she said:

“We feel pretty good about today.”

LINC is here to assist children, families and the community: kclinc.org/help