School shutdown sends parents scrambling — in different ways

With the first day of school in three weeks, some experts warn that virtual learning will worsen economic inequality.

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LEDGER IN-DEPTH

In Ballantyne, moms hire tutors and ponder private school; In west Charlotte, parents worry about internet access and supervision

Top: Parents in the Ballantyne community of Bridgehampton talk about how they can form groups and hire teachers to help their children through online learning at a meeting called by Karen Mullane (right). Bottom: Some moms who work at Bright Future Learning Center in west Charlotte are leaning on family or are still struggling to find childcare for their own children before remote learning starts next month. Mom of five Michelle Norman (left) is most worried about her 12-year-old who has cerebral palsy.

By Cristina Bolling

In an expansive and airy neighborhood clubhouse in Ballantyne, about 40 parents gather on a Sunday afternoon to talk about the online school year that lies ahead.

The parents — mostly moms, some in sundresses, some in workout clothes or just out of the pool — are here at the invitation of Karen Mullane, a kindergarten teacher and mom of two who lives in this Bridgehampton community of about 550 homes that straddles the N.C.-S.C. line.

Mullane invites the crowd to break into groups: “It might be advantageous for those of us who might have an education background or might have some expertise in areas, whether you’re an English major or a calculus major, just to kind of help support one another and to help develop what I’m calling ‘micro-classrooms.’”

Besides focusing on academics, neighbors should try to “get everybody socializing as much as learning,” Mullane says. “I think that emotional component for our children is so, so important, and we’re missing so much right now.”

As a society, there’s been so much to cope with as the pandemic takes its twists and turns, and this newest challenge appears to be the most defining yet: how we will educate our children at a time when most students are locked out of the classroom.

Hop in the car in Bridgehampton and drive 18 miles north, toward Wilkinson Boulevard in west Charlotte, and the conversation of how to help our kids is starkly different.

For many parents there, the worries are far more basic, and concerns about their kids’ socialization feel like a luxury. Without the safety nets that money, internet connectivity and vast social networks provide, staying academically on track is not a given.

Gloria Dukes runs a daycare center, a summer camp and an after-school program that cater to families who receive government childcare subsidies. She’s been receiving daily calls from parents who need her to keep her camp doors open once school starts, so their school-aged kids can have supervision while they work.

On Wednesday, Dukes got an email from the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, asking if she could keep her Bright Future Enrichment Center running full-time during the school year for kids in kindergarten through age 13 who’ll be doing remote learning.

She’s knows the need is there, and she’s hustling to make it happen.

Dukes is lining up bus drivers and other CMS employees who will be out of work when Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools switches to all-remote learning on Aug. 31. They’ll care for up to 64 children at Moore’s Sanctuary African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, where Dukes holds her summer camps and after-school program. She’s already making plans to transform empty church classrooms into computer labs.

“These parents are stressed, because where do they go?” Dukes says, standing in her daycare center on a recent morning. “If they stay home, it’s ‘I have to give up my job and I’m already on a fixed income. I can’t give my job up. I need to get rent and food for my children.’ It’s going to be a balancing act for them.”

Disparities amplified

Charlotte has always had social and economic disparities, but the decision last week by CMS to keep school buildings shut because of Covid-19 could amplify them.

A June study examining the disparate effects of virtual learning by Harvard University’s Raj Chetty, who authored the 2014 study that ranked Charlotte 50th out of 50 large cities in upward mobility, gave a bleak outlook: “COVID-19 may reduce social mobility and ultimately further amplify inequality by having particularly negative effects on human capital development for lower-income children.”

Guidance this week from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on reopening schools cited the Chetty study and warned of the dangers of keeping schools closed: “Disparities in educational outcomes caused by school closures are a particular concern for low-income and minority students and students with disabilities. … Persistent achievement gaps that already existed before Covid-19, such as disparities across income levels and races, can worsen and cause serious, hard-to-repair damage to children’s education outcomes.”

In wealthy areas of Charlotte, certified teachers with advanced degrees are hiring themselves out to individual families. Entrepreneurs are scaling up learning enrichment companies, offering parents concierge access to specialized teachers at price tags out of reach for those with low incomes.

For economically struggling families, community groups such as the Salvation Army’s Boys & Girls Clubs are offering childcare at free or reduced rates. But child advocates say there won’t be enough spots for all the families that need them.

No plan: The result is that many children will be home alone with shoddy internet connections and a lack of supervision from parents who have to report to essential jobs. There’s been no major plan rolled out by county or school officials about how to help families facing a childcare crisis.

Disparities in internet access are striking. A map showing internet connectivity by census tract falls into the usual wedge-and-crescent pattern, with the wealthy south Charlotte wedge having almost all homes connected, while others in the crescent having spottier coverage. In one census tract north of uptown between Beatties Ford Road and I-77, 48% of households lacked internet service.

Pat Millen, founder and president of Charlotte-based non-profit E2D - Eliminate the Digital Divide, which gives computers to needy families, said a silver lining to the pandemic is that more people are aware that large swaths of Charlotte lack internet access.

“A lot of people have said to me, ‘Holy smokes, the digital divide has just gotten out of control’ in regards to coronavirus,” he said, “to which I say, ‘It hasn’t grown at all, we’re just more aware of it, because we see in great relief the disparate impact that occurs if you don’t have access.”

South Charlotte: ‘micro-classrooms,’ private schools

At the Sunday meeting in Bridgehampton, Kristie Wagar, mom of a rising kindergartener and fourth grader, connected with fellow parents of rising-kindergartners, and within days, she and three other families had organized a “micro-classroom” that will rotate among their homes two days a week.

They lined up an out-of-work teacher to oversee online learning and activities from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. The other three days a week, her kindergartener will attend LeafSpring School childcare center, which is expanding to offer care for older children who are doing online learning.

Wagar and her husband both work full time — she in commercial real estate and he in healthcare. Both will be working from home for the foreseeable future, “but we are, literally, 8-to-5 on calls and meetings all day,” she said.

Switching to private school: Mullane, who called the meeting and who teaches kindergarten at a CMS school, is pulling her own children from public school this year and sending them to St. Matthew Catholic School, which is offering in-person, daily instruction this fall.

Her rising fourth- and fifth-graders have been attending Harrisburg Elementary, just over the South Carolina border. (The family lives on the South Carolina side of Bridgehampton.) Putting the kids in Catholic school was an idea Mullane and her husband had mulled for years, but last spring was the final straw.

“After last year’s debacle, I feel like my kids are missing the basics,” Mullane said. “They say 70% of your basic knowledge comes from fourth grade, and my fourth-grader didn’t get it.

“I had a teacher Zoom from her bed,” Mullane said. “They played ‘truth or dare’ one day. They played ‘two truths and a lie.’ There was no teaching.”

West Charlotte: Who will watch the kids?

At Gloria Dukes’ childcare centers on the west side, it isn’t only the parents of the children they care for who are stressed — the staff is stressed and stretched, too.

Keshia McKinley, the nutrition specialist who’s in charge of the meals and snacks at the daycare, plans to drive her third-grader to her sister’s house in Mooresville every day for supervision of online learning once school starts.

With just a few weeks until the start of the school year, Gloria Dukes plans to expand her Bright Future Enrichment Center, a school-aged childcare program in west Charlotte, to care for up to 64 children from kindergarten through age 13. Parents have told her they need a place to take their kids to do virtual learning while they go to work.

Daycare teacher Michelle Norman has four daughters aged 7 to 13 in addition to a daughter in college, and she’s still trying to figure out who will supervise their learning while she’s working at the daycare and her husband works his full-time job in social services.

What keeps Norman up at night, she says, are worries about her 12-year-old daughter Nyasia, who’s going into seventh grade and has cerebral palsy. Last spring, the abrupt switch to virtual learning and the lack of a consistent school schedule caused Nyasia to fall into a depression.

Nyasia needs constant help in school to retain information, and Norman has been looking for a tutor or a high school student who can come in and help her. So far, she’s had no luck.

Figuring out how she’ll pay for a tutor or babysitter “is a problem as well, but I feel like, I’ll deal with it when I get to it.”

Recently, the high-school daughter of a co-worker at the daycare offered to swing by Norman’s house on school days to check on her children if all else fails. Norman hesitates to take her up on it, knowing the the high schooler will have enough on her own plate.

“You figure out one problem,” she said, “and it just creates another problem.”

Reach managing editor Cristina Bolling: cristina@cltledger.com.

This article was produced by The Charlotte Ledger, which is working with local media partners WFAE, Qcitymetro and La Noticia to cover the economic effects of the coronavirus on minority communities in Charlotte. The effort is funded in part by the Facebook Journalism Project.

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This week’s original Ledger articles

It’s the weekend. Why not catch up on what you might have missed this week in The Ledger?

• “Making my way through the pandemic.” Former Observer business columnist Doug Smith wrote a nice column for us on how he and his wife are navigating the pandemic — and how you might, too. The key, he writes: “Remember your happiest times, your favorite vacations, your childhood adventures, your most enduring friendships, your biggest regrets and even your worst misadventures.”

• “A big opportunity for tutoring businesses.” It’s back-to-school season but much different this year, as spending on clothes and supplies has shifted to electronics and tutoring, according to a Q&A with the head of Deloitte’s retail practice.

• “CMS virtual learning: Who has internet at home and who doesn’t?” The digital divide in Charlotte is real, with neighborhoods north and west of uptown tending to have much less internet access at home than south Charlotte.

• “The Ledger Covid-19 Data Room.” We helped you understand the spread of Covid by examining new numbers from the state showing that use of ICU beds and ventilators are flat, even as cases rise; and we looked at the “case fatality rate,” which shows huge differences in death rates by age.

• “New real estate trend: Building houses for renters” (subscriber-only). Kerry Hall Singe examined a nationwide trend that is now showing up in Charlotte: Developers who are building new all-rental single-family neighborhoods. They could be especially popular in the Covid era, as people seek more space and grow tired of being cooped up in small apartments.

• “Parents are hot for teachers” (subscriber-only). Teachers are now in high demand in Charlotte, as many parents want to hire them to serve as tutors and supervisors of virtual learning. A teacher in Asheville was even offered $50,000 by a family to leave her job. Charlotte teachers say they need more clarity on their hours and working conditions before making the jump.

• “New UNCC chancellor takes the reins.” Sharon Gaber started this week as the new chancellor of UNC Charlotte, the UNC system’s third-largest campus. She released a four-minute video and dropped a good-luck coin in the pan of UNCC’s Norm the Niner statue.

• “Online chat with Ledger editors” (subscriber-only). The Ledger is all about trying new things and communicating honestly with our readers, so we held our first-ever online reader chat for paying subscribers. Topics included the future of local media, the long-term effect of Covid on Charlotte, the city’s increase in homicides and CMS back-to-school plans. I guess you’d call that a wide-ranging discussion.

• “Reeling restaurants hit with new restrictions” (subscriber-only). The city and county imposed new regulations on restaurants this week — and the effects are spilling over to places that aren’t the late-night hotspots local officials are hoping to control. Some restaurants are objecting to the new bans on sitting and eating at bar areas and the requirement to close by 11 p.m., which they say will make survival even tougher.

• “Most private schools go with in-person classes” (subscriber-only). Charlotte’s biggest private schools are planning for students to have face-to-face instruction, and they’re fielding a lot of calls from parents seeing if there’s space.

• “Charlotte soccer team gets a name, and the internet reacts.” Is “Charlotte FC” too boring? Does the team’s logo resemble an upside-down space ship? Look at Chico’s new tattoo! The internet never ceases to amuse.

• “New apartments in NoDa?” (subscriber-only). A developer filed plans with the city for new apartments near 36th and North Davidson streets.

We also told you about all the other big business and local news of the week, as usual. Plus “Loves me some internet.”

We’re producing thoughtful, responsible articles about the city you live in — minus the clickbait and relentless pop-up video ads. We can do that because of the support of paying subscribers. If you’re not one, please consider joining to receive access to everything we produce:

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In brief

• Grant for Fortune 500 company: The City Council is holding a public hearing Monday on the proposal to award a grant to Centene Corp. for up to $31.6M over 12 years. The healthcare giant announced this month that it is building a campus in University City and hopes to hire at least 3,200 workers. The selection of Charlotte was aided by promises of a state grant of $388M, a county grant of $26M, the city grant and $4.5M in community college training funds.

• SouthPark Loop funding: The City Council on Monday is expected to authorize spending $1.5M to repay developers who help build The Loop, a 3-mile urban trail around SouthPark that “will incorporate custom signage, lighting, furnishings, public art, and landscaping to create a dynamic, high-quality experience, a consistent brand, and a unique sense of place for the area.” The Ledger wrote about The Loop and upcoming changes to SouthPark in November.

• Inching up: Covid hospitalizations in Mecklenburg County hit 197 on Wednesday, according to new data from the health department. That’s a “slight increase” over the 14-day average, the county said. (Mecklenburg County)

• South-of-Charlotte hospital plans: Atrium Health plans to open its new 40-bed hospital in the Union County town of Stallings in early 2022. Meanwhile, Novant Health hopes to break ground this fall for its “South Charlotte Medical Center” in Indian Land, S.C., at U.S. 521 and Marvin Road. (Biz Journal, subscriber-only)

• Crowd control: A judge this week lifted a court order limiting the use of crowd-control measures by Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police. Last month, after CMPD’s use of tear gas and pepper bullets to disperse protestors, a judge had issued a temporary restraining order that required police to use those measures only in limited circumstances. (WBTV)

• More trouble ahead for Belk? Retailers are having a rough time financially, and bankruptcies are piling up. Examining the trend, an article in the Wall Street Journal this week included this line: “Other retailers at high risk of defaulting by 2021 include department-store chain Belk Inc.,” citing a Fitch analyst. Belk is headquartered in Charlotte. (WSJ, subscriber-only)

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