'Find your community'; In critical year ahead, schools want you back, welcomed and safe

So much didn't go as planned in Kansas City and America's scrambled school year.

Everyone uncomfortable. So many families feeling lost. The tethers dependent on uneven technology too often broken.

It’s OK. Just come back.

Area schools and their earnest staffs are preparing welcoming campaigns for August's new school year.
It doesn't matter how well — or not — you and your child managed the hard time. A common message is brewing. Children, however much they struggled with online learning, will be advanced with their peers into the next grade. Everyone will recover together.

Come back as you are.

The impact of Covid-19 fell with different weight across school systems and neighborhoods in the Kansas City area. The economic hardship and the number of coronavirus cases and deaths struck deeper in low-income areas and communities of color.

Public school districts and public charter schools in the higher-threatened areas spent more of the past school year in virtual classes. LINC, its partner districts and the community reached out to help children and families caught up in the pandemic's far-reaching pain.

But the road was hard, and no one should have to feel alone in re-engaging the 2021-2022 school year.

"Find your community," said Kristin Droege, executive director of Turn the Page KC.

The non-profit agency that promotes early reading skill is working with other concerned programs like the national non-profit Attendance Works, helping schools rally with communities to regain learning’s lost ground.

Schools have a lot of work to do, clarifying learning options, assuring health and safety and providing a warm welcome, Attendance Works advises. But the need for personal connections with families couldn’t be stronger for what looms as a critical school year across the nation.

“We’re going to have a ton of kids who have not been in the routine of … in-person schooling,” Hedy Chang, executive director of Attendance Works, told the Hechinger Report. “Teachers are really going to have to support this learning.”

Nationwide, students of color suffered a “strikingly negative impact” according to a federal civil rights report commissioned by President Joe Biden in a story by Pro Publica. “Those who went into the pandemic with the fewest opportunities are at risk of leaving with even less.”

In the Hechinger Report, Racial Justice NOW! co-founder Zakiya Sankara-Jabar predicted “a sharp decline” in enrollment when schools fully reopen, as frustration and lack of communication have plagued many school systems.

“I’m fearing that since the pandemic has happened,” she said, “those lines of communication that barely existed before don’t exist at all now.”

Local school districts are charting their paths forward, working on plans to speed the academic recovery of students who will return with a wider disparity in skills. Financial boosts from the $13.2 billion Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund will help schools accelerate learning.

Children in the Kansas City Public Schools will be welcomed and promoted, said Assistant Superintendent of School Leadership Lloyd Jackson. Curriculum is being updated. Schools will provide additional interventions and supports. The district will be holding a week-long enrollment fair July 26-31 to engage families and reach out to those who are anxious about returning.

This has to be a community-wide effort, joining districts, public charter schools, civic organizations and education supporters, said Kevin Foster, executive director of Genesis School in Kansas City.

“We need to send a strong message,” he said, with everyone “in one voice.”

The campaigns are gearing up. Critical recovery and re-engagement plans are building.

Just come back.

By Joe Robertson/LINC Writer