Pandemic Leads To Digital Divide Focus

City alders applauded Interim Superintendent Iline Tracey and her team for quickly closing the divide between students who can learn from home and those who can’t amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

At the same time, Tracey said that New Haven Public Schools has a long journey ahead. The school district has given out over 8,000 Chromebooks and iPads since Covid-19 hit the region and has 12,000 more to go. Many of the devices needed have not been purchased yet.

“I think the task that you all have in front of you is unprecedented. Dr. Tracey, you are leading a movement to close the digital divide in — how many months? This is history-making,” said Alder Darryl Brackeen, Jr.

That exchange took place during a Board of Alders Education Committee meeting held via Zoom on Wednesday evening. Tracey presented her team’s efforts to stabilize families and help children learn during the Covid-19 pandemic.

According to an NHPS survey, most students’ families — around 70 percent of the 12,500 who responded — did not have an electronic device that could work to learn on long-term when Covid-19 first closed schools in mid-March.

Tracey said this represents an ongoing inequality the school district hopes to prevent in the future by ensuring that every child has their own device and can learn from home.

“On Day One when more wealthy districts were able to send home an iPad or laptop, we had to start out with two weeks of packets,” Tracey said.

Assistant Superintendent Paul Whyte has spearheaded a distribution process in which families offer the names, grades and schools of their children to pick up the devices from school buildings. He said that some families have not responded to the invitations at all, so the schools’ Office of Youth, Family and Community Engagement is reaching out to those families.

The biggest hurdle for NHPS has been collecting together enough money to purchase the laptops and tablets, Tracey said.

The state, Yale organizations and philanthropists have donated enough to secure another 7,000 devices for New Haven students. That leaves a gap of 5,000 devices.

Many more families had some kind of internet connection than had devices at home. 85 percent of the survey respondents answered that they did have an internet connection. The district does not have detail on the quality of that connection and whether it is adequate for distance learning.

To take care of the 15 percent of families who did not have any internet at home, NHPS worked with Comcast to open access to Xfinity hotspots across the city. The hotspots will be free for two months.

After that, administrators are not sure yet what will happen.

“We will try to get creative about other ways to get access, like using vehicles to create WiFi hotspots,” Whyte said.

So far, the hotspots seem to be working, because parents have largely stopped calling the school about technical issues, Assistant Superintendent Keisha Redd-Hannans said.

The devices have an unexpected bonus of helping families connect with telehealth services, so they do not have to visit a doctor’s office to see a doctor, Tracey reported.

“It’s still mind-boggling that 15 percent of our students straight-up lack internet access. It’s great that we have hotspots for now,” said Alder Steven Winter.

The unevenness in who has laptops and internet at home has led to very different distance learning experiences for students across the country.

In New Haven, access to technology is one of many factors that has led to a gap of around 2,000 students who have never logged on to the school’s remote learning systems. As with the families who have not picked up devices, the school system is leaning on YFCE to help find out what is happening.

Annex Alder Jody Ortiz asked Tracey what the first days back in school will look like when the Covid-19 pandemic has subsided.

“On Day One, I would say do nothing. Hug your kids. Have fun with them. A lot of kids are coming back hurting,” Tracey said.

She explained that she has heard stories of students whose family members have passed away from Covid-19 and stories about domestic abuse rising while families are stuck indoors.

“I just want my teachers to have their arms wrapped around my students,” she said.

Click below to watch a recent interview in which Iline Tracey explored similar questions, on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline New Haven” program.