As schools prep for virtual learning, 1/3 of Dallas families lack internet access
Co-published by our media partner, KERA. Listen to the radio version on KERA’s website.
Jamaala Karim walks into the Paul Dunbar Learning Center cafeteria. It’s filled with staff hired to help distribute technology to students’ families.
“Having to go from single mom to teacher, it’s like, uhhhhhh,” she sighs heavily.
Karim picks up two clear backpacks. Each of them has a Chromebook and headphones for her incoming third- and fourth-graders. She also picks up a hotspot device because her family does not have internet at home.
“It was very difficult,” Karim says, thinking back to the spring semester when the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools. “I think they weren’t really ready for that. When you get on Google classroom, it wasn’t working very well and the WiFi device was acting up a little bit. I kept having to call the school and ask them to fix it, and then I had to go pick up another device.”
Last spring Dunbar distributed 218 hotspots to families of its 515 elementary school students, with even more handed out in August. Principal Alpher Garrett-Jones really wants to make sure her students are prepared for virtual learning this fall. She came to the South Dallas school two years ago to turn the failing campus around.
“What we did was absolutely monumental,” Garrett-Jones explains.
She points to the award on the wall of her office. After Garrett-Jones took over, students’ state test scores earned them a “B” rating, and the school’s grade rose from an F to a C.
So when COVID hit in the spring, Garrett-Jones knew she couldn’t just close her doors like the other schools in Dallas ISD.
“OK so to be honest — we never closed,” Garrett-Jones admits. “We had a porch out on the front. And, so that’s what we did. We gave them the instruction that they needed in order to be successful. We could not afford for it to stop just because of the pandemic.”
Garrett-Jones wouldn’t talk about the barriers most of her students face, but her actions have addressed issues beyond instruction. Over the last two years, she set up a washer and dryer so students could have clean clothes, created a closet for toiletries, and made sure teachers tucked food into students’ backpacks at the end of the day, just in case there wasn’t food at home.
Suffice to say, Garrett-Jones anticipated problems with internet access and virtual learning. In a recent Dallas ISD survey, about a third of Dallas families don’t have internet access at home. Garrett-Jones says she couldn’t afford to lose the academic gains she had made at Dunbar because of the digital divide.
And, she’s not alone. School officials and education leaders worry that the current inequities in broadband access will widen gaps in academic performance that existed before the COVID-19 pandemic — disproportionately impacting the poor and students of color.
“I think it’s important to note that it is the district’s commitment to meet that need,” says Jack Kelanic, chief technology officer for Dallas ISD.
Kelanic was hired two years ago to implement Dallas ISD’s long range technology plan. More than $200 million was earmarked for technology in the 2015 bond package so that kindergarten through 12thgrade students would have individual iPads and Chromebooks, and schoo