
While the surrounding county’s coronavirus test positivity rate is hovering around 3% - below the 5% level that federal officials have offered as a safety threshold - the rates in the district itself are more than three times higher. The school district serves around 7,700 students, of whom 42% are Hispanic, 33% are Black and 15% are white. In the Norristown Area School District, outside Philadelphia, schools will teach students virtually until at least January. Other factors are also influencing reopening decisions, including the severity of local virus outbreaks, school districts’ ability to pay for costly safety precautions, and the guidelines set out by public health officials. The district - which is about 66% Hispanic, 20% Black and about 7% white - will teach students virtually through at least mid-October. “We believe they are taking our best interests at heart to keep everyone safe,” said Maira Velazquez, a Hispanic parent who was interviewed in Spanish and whose children go to school in the Manor district in suburban Austin. That likely reflects the disparate toll of the pandemic, with people from those communities dying at higher rates from COVID-19. National and state polls show that Black and Latino parents are more likely to be wary of returning to school in person than white parents. Schools in areas that supported President Donald Trump in 2016 are more likely to open in person, the AP/Chalkbeat and other analyses show.Īnother potential reason: School officials are responding to families. There are a number of possible explanations for the racial divide. “I do worry about that and the fact there are these correlations between what schools are doing and students’ backgrounds,” said Jon Valant, a senior fellow focused on education at the Brookings Institution. Wealthy families may fill the gaps, but others will go without.
#I downloaded autodesk maya student version however the program is stuck in setup free
Students learning from home also will lose reliable access to free or subsidized meals, special education services and other support. But the survey shows that race is a strong predictor of which public schools are offering in-person instruction and which aren’t.įor some students, continued distance learning raises risks they will fall behind peers who are learning in person, even though many districts say virtual learning will be much improved from the spring. Survey responses from 677 school districts covering 13 million students found that most students will begin the school year online. In every state, the AP and Chalkbeat surveyed the largest school districts in each of four categories set by the National Center for Education Statistics: urban, suburban, town and rural.
