Norristown Area High School, Norristown, Pennsylvania.jpg by Montgomery County Planning Commission is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
The job of a school board member is impactful and thankless in normal times. They often times have to make tough decisions about other people’s children that result in raised taxes, and, unlike other elected officials, they do not get paid. The pandemic and its associated restrictions have hit schools and education the hardest, with school boards having to make decisions soonest and with the least guidance and support from the governmental bodies around them.
One of the many inequities the novel coronavirus has exposed is in education. Back in March school districts had to institute virtual learning on the fly. Two things that any plan would require was access to electronic devices like tablets, Chromebooks or laptops as well as access to the internet. For some communities, access to these resources were taken for granted, but in places like the Norristown School District, where there is a wide spectrum of students on the socioeconomic scale, some students where left at a huge disadvantage.
“Fortunately, we were in the process of making sure every student in the district had a laptop,” said Norristown School Board member Turea Huston. “COVID did force us to speed up our timeline to make sure all students could learn virtually.”
When it was apparent schools were going to have to go virtual, many districts petitioned internet providers like Comcast to increase bandwidth and offer more services like Comcast Essentials, which provides free internet to households that could not afford it. They also had hotspots available to those who needed them.
“Internet is now an essential utility like heat or electricity. Unfortunately for many in our community this resources is not readily available,” Hutson said. “With schools closing but learning still necessary, we needed to find ways to make sure our students had at home many of the resources they have in school.”
Since the Norristown School District has a certain percentage of students below the poverty line they receive the Community Eligibility Grant, through the United State Department of Agriculture, which is given to school district so they can provide breakfast and lunch to everyone. Since the schools were closing the district had to work come up with a plan to distribute meals in addition to figuring out the logistics of virtual learning.
“We have plenty of meals that we are giving people food for everyone in the house,” Hutson said. “It has been a rough year but I’m encouraged by how the administration worked tirelessly for our students.”
The plan for the school district was always to give every student laptop. COVID accelerated that project. So they purchased more earlier.
