Parent Reluctance Shapes Covid Budget

Every New Haven student will have a laptop or tablet in the fall. At the same time, there will not be enough classroom space for every child to study safely in school buildings.

These are among the guiding assumptions of the emerging New Haven Public Schools plan for use of the education-focused Covid-19 relief promised in the CARES Act in March.

“In our worst-case scenario — if we had to spend every dollar — social distancing would probably be the biggest challenge. We would have to rent a significant amount of space,” said NHPS finance chief Phillip Penn.

Instead, New Haven schools plan to make sure every student can do distance learning if they need to. This prioritization reflects parent reluctance to send their children back to school as the Covid-19 pandemic continues, Penn said. (Read a parent perspective on the issues with reopening schools here.)

Only 55 percent of families surveyed want to send their child into a school building this fall, according to a recent survey conducted by the superintendent’s office. Roughly half of NHPS families responded to the survey.

If families change their minds or all the nonrespondents decide to attend school in person, the district would need more state and federal help, Penn told the Board of Education’s Finance and Operation Committee on Monday afternoon.

New Haven has the right to around $8.5 million of the CARES Act’s Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSERF). Roughly $130,000 of that sum will go to non-public schools.

The full cost of preparing to educate every child in the classroom every day, as the state has asked, would look more like $13.5 million, Penn said.

Digital Divide

The bulk of New Haven’s ESSERF budget—$5 million — would go towards Chromebooks, iPads and other devices to help students learn and teachers teach remotely.

Superintendent Iline Tracey announced her goal of one device per student soon after Covid-19 closed New Haven schools in March. In New Haven, only 30 percent of families started out distance learning with a computer, according to an NHPS survey. This meant that both families and teachers had a significant learning curve to adjust to online school.

Through distribution days and staff outreach, the school system was able to hand out around 8,500 laptops and tablets to students. That leaves more than half of NHPS’ roughly 20,000 students unaccounted for.

Assistant Superintendent Paul Whyte, who led the technology distribution effort, said that the school system had enough devices to hand out to whoever asked for them through May.

Whyte said that some families did not pick up the devices assigned to them because they had one at home or did not want to participate in distance learning. Others worried that they would have to pay for a replacement computer if the school-issued one was damaged, though that was not a requirement, Whyte said.

The CARES Act dollars would help to close this remaining technology gap, so those who want to continue distance learning can. It would also help the school system pivot easily to a full or partial shutdown of schools if the spread of Covid-19 in Connecticut hits certain thresholds, the grant application argues.

The computers would be given out based on age groups. Younger students would get tablets and older students would get laptops.

The application also budgets for software for English learners, better cameras and computers for teachers, and professional development for teachers, paraprofessionals and principals on how to teach remotely effectively. The Board of Education has already approved the consultant for this training and many teachers have already gone through the training.

Internet connection has proved a challenge for some families, despite an initiative to provide free wifi this spring. Penn said on Monday that the long-term plan for this problem is to place antenna on 13 schools to provide free wifi where most necessary. This project is not in the ESSERF budget.

School Safety

Another $1.1 million of the grant would pay for upgrades and hygiene measures to make New Haven schools safer in the fall.

The district would buy a printer to print signs for the walls and floors in-house to help remind students of hygiene and physical distance guidelines. Front desks would have new plexiglass barriers. $100,000 would help convert the air filters in the schools to the standards recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Over $300,000 of this budget would pay for personal protective equipment (PPE), including hand sanitizer, gloves and 100,000 disposable face masks.

This last item raised eyebrows among the parent and teacher activist group NHPS Advocates. How long would 100,000 face masks last? NHPSA asked in an email before the committee meeting.

Penn responded during the meeting that this sum is not enough and that teachers and students will be expected to bring their own masks.

“Some kid will forget their mask or staff will forget their mask. We will not turn anyone away from a learning environment because they forgot to bring one,” Penn said.

Penn said that some of the items that the district intends to purchase with ESSERF will likely cost less than the district budgeted. In that case, the district will purchase more PPE or use the money for unforeseen emergencies.

While the district is not planning to rent additional classroom space, administrators do plan to bring in 100 substitute teachers to maintain smaller class sizes and 137 paraprofessionals to help special education students keep their masks on and wash their hands frequently.

The district budgeted around $800,000 for these instructors, which would only cover 50 days of school, according to the application.

Board and committee member Larry Conaway identified what he saw as a different hole in the budget: $15,000 set aside for disengaged students.

“That’s such a small amount for a serious population. That line item is very, very low,” Conaway said.

Tracey responded that the district is spending other grants on that category of vulnerable students and agreed that they are a priority for the district.

Penn said that the way the district is planning to spend the CARES Act grant comes out of months of conversations among Tracey’s ​“Tiger Team” of parents, educators and administrators focused on the pandemic. The Board of Education plans to hear public feedback and discuss the Tiger Team’s full reopening plan on Tuesday evening at 5 p.m.

Advocates Release Plan

Meanwhile, New Haven Public School Advocates released three demands that the governor consider as he pushes for a fall in-person school reopening:

“1. Put the brakes on in-person return: In-person instruction should be phased-in after an initial return to distance learning, beginning fall 2020.

“2. Fund the safest return possible: Adequate additional state funding must fully cover the costs of PPE, physical classroom modification, increased custodial personnel, and smaller class sizes.

“3. Ensure professional development and training in distance-learning best practices: Educators must be trained to deliver quality distance learning, which we acknowledge is vastly different from the emergency transition to online learning that occurred this past spring.”