NEW YORK CITY, NY – Parents and advocates of students in New York City have reported that some students who have missed too many remote classes because of faulty devices or unreliable internet services are now being threatened with have child services notified of their absences.
Daily News reported that at least two parents have said that their children are being unfairly targeted for virtual class absences that are clearly stemming from circumstances outside of their control.
Some of these issues include malfunctioning city-issued iPads and unreliable internet in city homeless shelters.
NYC plans to install Wi-Fi in all city-run homeless shelters after reporting from the Daily News highlighted issues homeless students are having accessing the internet to attend their remote learning classes.https://t.co/GMpI0tyPzM
— New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) October 26, 2020
One mom, who lives in the South Bronx, said that her two iPads that were issued from the Education Department have been on the fritz with a “repair request” pending for months. In order for her two elementary aged kids to continue learning, they have to share a single laptop and miss classes when siblings’ schedules overlap.
The mom, Regina Alston, said that she alerted school officials at Grant Ave. Elementary school about the issue immediately. However, just this week, an administrator warned Alston’s nine-year-old daughter that the school would have to alert child services if her virtual absences continued.
Alston fumed in a statement:
“I’m angry. I think the DOE is trying to put the fault on the parents, but it’s not. This whole remote learning is an epic failure.”
Alston was particularly aggravated because the school administrator raised the issue with her daughter instead of her.
She said:
“Why would you threaten a 9-year-old with child services? Child services should never be a conversation to have with a 9-year-old.”
NYC schools will no longer be required to offer live online classes to hundreds of thousands of students who have opted for partial remote learning, according to new guidance issues by the Education Department.https://t.co/RVYNgvlLZr
— New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) September 16, 2020
According to reports, child welfare agencies have been getting involved more often than they should in cases of remote truancy since city schools shut their doors late spring due to the coronavirus.
Some of these instances where happening before students even received their iPads that city officials promised to any student without a device.
Allegedly, Education Department officials said that they have scrambled to clarify to schools that they cannot simply report a “suspected educational neglect” to the city’s Administrators for Children’s Services without first confirming that the virtual absences are not related to faulty tablets, spotty internet, or other tech shortages.
“Some school districts tried to help by sending iPads or other devices to families, but it didn’t fully fix the problem. For example, families with multiple kids didn’t always get a device for each child, Ronald Richter, CEO of the New York-based child welfare agency JCCA.”
— JCCA (@JCCANY) July 20, 2020
Education Department spokesman Nathanial Styer said in a statement:
“School and district staff exhaust all options to contact families and they are keenly aware of the realities of remote and blended learning.”
He added:
“It is stressed repeatedly that access to technology should not be the sole reason to make a report to ACS and any indication that this guidance is not being followed is concerning and will be taken seriously.”
According to reports, officials say that educational neglect incident are down significantly overall this school year, with 34 reports filed this September, compared to roughly 200 in the same month in 2019 and 2018.
However, parents and advocates say that even when a report is not filed, the threat of child welfare involvement in and of itself can be traumatizing for already overwhelmed parents and kids, especially those in low income communities of color.
NYC will install Wi-Fi in homeless shelters following Daily News report on homeless students’ internet issues https://t.co/WQsnAXfjpG
— Mindy Rosier-Rayburn (@MindyRosier) October 26, 2020
Alston said in a statement:
“The last thing I want is my daughter having nightmares being scared someone is going to remove her from her home. She didn’t want to even go into school on Thursday.”
Another parent from Manhattan lives in a homeless shelter without WiFi or strong enough cell services to reliably get on through her cell phone data plan on her two kids’ iPads. As a result, her kids have struggled to long in for nearly a month. The mom, Katlyn Winegardner believes that the tech issues are entirely in the city’s power to fix.
Winegardner said that she kept in constant contact with the school about her kids’ tech barriers, so he was extremely shocked to get a call from a DOE attendance official asking her to explain her kids’ absences. She said:
“The officer was saying why haven’t I taken my daughter to school or had my daughter in class since September 16th. I said, who contacted you? Where did she get the memo to reach out to me and say my children hadn’t been in school? If it came from the school, they were very well aware what the situation was.”
One of the most heartbreaking issues with coronavirus is the impact it is having on our homeless populations. Thousands of NYC public school students live in shelters and do not have access to the internet. The technology divide is real. https://t.co/mgPV511t6n
— The Libyan (@NoDaysOff85) March 27, 2020
Winegardner said that after the phone call she was terrified that the city’s Adminstration for Children’s Services would open an investigation into her kids’ remote no-shows.
She said:
“I’m scared. I woke up overwhelmed. I cried a little bit today.”
Families in numerous shelters across the city are struggling to connect their kids to remote classes under the cellular data plan set up by the city. Susan Horwitz, the supervising attorney for the Education Law Project at the Legal Aid Society said:
“Through no fault of her own and through the city’s fault in not assuring all kids are able to connect, this parent is now facing involvement from ACS because her kids were unable to attend school.”
According to Education Department officials, there are a “number” of steps schools must follow before alerting ACS when a child is racking up excessive remote absences.
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