By Peter Cameron, Wisconsin Watch
On Sept. 1, when many Wisconsin public schools will reopen, some will offer online-only instruction to avoid spreading COVID-19.
State law in Wisconsin allows each school district to determine the operations of their buildings and their learning environment, including how to manage during the pandemic. A final tally of which form of instruction each district chooses will not be available until early September.
How well these efforts will go in rural areas with slow internet or spotty cellphone access – or urban schools where students can’t afford high-speed hookups – remains an open question.
What seems clear is that the chaos and uncertainty for Wisconsin’s working families extends across the country. But the prospect of virtual schooling is particularly daunting for rural families in Wisconsin, where 43% of rural areas lack broadband coverage — far more than the national average of 31%.
One example . . .
Amy Jo Hellenbrand and her husband Andy raise corn, soybeans, wheat, heifers, chickens, goats and bunnies on their 40-acre farmette just outside the village of Dane, about 20 miles north of Madison.
They also raise four children — ages 11, 9, 8 and 5 — and up to five more children attend her home day care for at least part of the day.
That made this spring particularly challenging, when the pandemic forced schools across the state to close. Mirroring the rest of Wisconsin, education for the Hellenbrand children relocated to their kitchen table.
That task was made even more difficult by sluggish internet service that slows even further when the family nears monthly data limits.
“It was wild, it was chaotic, stressful,” Hellenbrand said. “I broke out in hives because of the stress and anxiety. I was on steroids for a while.”
The 44-year-old mother thinks children need to be back in school — at least part-time.
But the Lodi School District, where the children attend, decided in July to provide schooling virtually through at least November. That’s going to make life tough for the Hellenbrands.
“I don’t want anybody to get sick and die,” Amy Jo Hellenbrand said. “But something needs to change.”
. . . and a second one
About 30 miles west of Madison near Blue Mounds, Matt Millar also struggled with the pandemic that sent his three children – ages 10, 7 and 5 – back home during the school day. Millar himself works from home as a data scientist, and he doesn’t have a lot of extra time to manage his childrens’ education.
“There were many days where I didn’t get one of the kids onto their class Zoom on time, or at all,” Millar said. “It wasn’t going to happen. There’s three of them.”
The 43-year-old dad and the children’s mother — who split custody — are now trying to decide what to do in the fall. The Barneveld School District, where the children attend, is planning to open with full in-person instruction.
Millar is considering sending his children to school for the first couple of days so they can meet their teachers and classmates, then pull them out. His own analysis suggests the school district’s in-person plan has a 20% chance of success.
Instead, Millar is considering “podding” — finding a few other families to pool together and hire a teacher to educate a smaller group of children, one-room schoolhouse style. But finding other interested families has been difficult.
Not all rural areas equal
The Millars are fortunate to have excellent internet service at their rural home. That makes their choice to keep their children out of school easier.
But the Hellenbrands are more typical for rural Wisconsin families. They rely on a sluggish DSL connection. The family also has data caps, which slow down connections as they near the monthly limits.
Before the pandemic, the state estimated that about 15% – approximately 130,000 children – lacked broadband access, said Kurt Kiefer, an assistant state superintendent for the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction who focuses on school technology.
Congress’ $2 trillion CARES Act stimulus in March infused U.S. schools with funds to move to all-virtual schooling in the spring. Wisconsin schools got more than $200 million of that. A top expenditure was buying a mountain of hotspots, hockey-puck shaped devices that beam wifi into the home using cellphone networks.
Kiefer said CARES Act money also funded low-cost internet subscriptions for parents. And districts moved internet routers to create public wifi zones in school and library parking lots. But, Kiefer noted, “that really isn’t a solution in November and December and January in Wisconsin.”
Technology splurge helped . . . some
That school splurge on technology cut down the rural broadband have-nots significantly, Kiefer said. The state now estimates that 5% of students — about 45,000 — still lack access to broadband in part because hotspots don’t work in areas without cell coverage.
A survey of school districts by the Wisconsin Educational Media & Technology Association reported that 64% said parts of their district lack broadband or cellular access, and 37% said they were unable to provide hotspots or wifi cards.
Steve Elliott, a father of three children and president of the Albany School Board, highlighted this problem when he testified before the state Assembly’s Education Committee in June.
In an interview, Elliott said that during the pandemic, members of his family sometimes had to work from his wife’s cheese shop to get effective internet access.
“Our schools are dependent upon infrastructure that doesn’t exist,” he said.
One strength Wisconsin schools have, among a wave of problems, is the universality of personal devices. Many already had supplied Chromebooks or tablets for their students, at least the older ones.
Before the last school year, more than 80% of the state’s 421 school districts reported being able to deliver education to all students via their own laptop or tablet – so-called 1:1 technology. And many school districts bought new devices in the spring to cover the students who didn’t have their own.
The number of personal devices in public schools is “a huge advantage over even four years ago,” said Richard Halverson, a University of Wisconsin-Madison education professor who researches education technology.
‘You plan, you plan … and then things change’
Some districts, including Albany, plan to start by bringing back students up to 6th grade for some in-person instruction during at least the first two weeks while older students attend school virtually.
A July survey of 70 rural school districts conducted by the Wisconsin Rural Schools Alliance found that nearly two-thirds planned to offer in-person education with social distancing measures in place. Another one-third of schools planned a hybrid model of virtual and in-building instruction. About 3% said they planned an every-other-day schedule, in which students are split into two groups and alternate days coming to school.
But the situation on the ground is constantly changing. The tiny South Shore school district in Port Wing on the shore of Lake Superior is planning to welcome all of its 179 students to school because it has the space to socially distance. Its classrooms were built for 30 students, and the largest class in the district has 18, Superintendent Clendon Gustafson said. Its 2020 graduating class had seven students.
But county health officials are worried about spikes in COVID-19 cases after the Labor Day weekend, and South Shore might start the year virtually.
“You plan, you plan, you plan, and then things change,” said Kim Kaukl, the executive director of the Wisconsin Rural Schools Alliance.
Partisan political considerations
Schools are also stepping into a political crossfire.
A recent Marquette University Law School Poll of Wisconsin residents found that 74% of Republicans were “comfortable” with kids returning to school, as were 45% of independents. Only 18% of Democrats said they were comfortable.
Republicans in the state Legislature sent at least one letter to school administrators urging them to provide in-person education this fall. But Jon R. Bales, executive director of the Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators, responded in a recent letter of his own, saying a “business-as-usual” approach ignores serious risks to students, staff, families and communities.
“This is a much different conversation with the community now than it was in March,” said Kevin Genisot, superintendent of the Hurley School District. “It’s turned vastly more political than ever … No matter the decision we make, people are upset.”
‘Not just a plan A and plan B’
Despite the pressure from all sides, many Wisconsin school districts will be basing their decisions on the prevalence of the virus. Even those districts planning to come back fully to in-person instruction say they must prepare for a spike and a return to virtual teaching.
“If our numbers go up, we’re going to go virtual,” Genisot said. “If our numbers stabilize or go down, we’re going to be in the building.”
Some parents will keep their children home no matter what and they will need instruction. Those without internet access will need paper packets delivered to them.
“We don’t just have a plan A and a plan B,” said Amy Lund, a La Farge High School social studies teacher who sits on her district’s pandemic planning committee. “We’ve got a plan A through double D for everything that could possibly happen – hopefully.”
Perhaps a silver lining
Halverson, the UW-Madison education professor, said the disaster of the pandemic and teachers’ scramble to adapt may turn out better than expected.
“I don’t want to say a catastrophe is a blessing, but there are going to be so many teachers who are now going to become aware of the power of digital tools to extend their teaching,” he said. “That’s just a small benefit from a really tough situation.”
In the meantime, families and schools must muddle through.
Ten-year-old Adara, Matt Millar’s oldest, said she sometimes struggles to focus while staring at her iPad for school. She and her brothers miss seeing their teachers and goofing around with their friends. But Adara worries about bringing COVID-19 home to her family, especially her grandparents.
Virtual schooling can be tough, Adara said, but it has taught her at least one big lesson.
“You don’t really know how lucky you are to have a normal life,” she said, “until you can’t have a normal life.”
Note: the Wisconsin Watch home page photo was taken by Will Cioci.
This piece is part of a collaborative reporting project called Lesson Plans: Rural schools grapple with COVID with the Institute for Nonprofit News and several member newsrooms. The collaboration was made possible by a grant from the Walton Family Foundation. The nonprofit Wisconsin Watch (wisconsinwatch.org) collaborates with WPR, PBS Wisconsin, other news media and the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by Wisconsin Watch do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.
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