June 2023 – Whoopsie Piggle

What do poor people look like?

Perhaps the designers of the latest Harvest for Hunger ad don’t know people who are poor. The ad, which thanks everyone who contributed to the latest Harvest for Hunger Campaign, prominently features a of photo of a young girl sitting in front of a meal.

I imagine the design committee’s discussion as follows:

“A child who is neither too white, nor too Black.”

“She shouldn’t smile, but we don’t want her to look too sad either.”

“How can we make it clear that she’s poor?”

“I got it,” says one. “Let’s give her bed-head.”

The result is a hackneyed stereotype of the poor — a child whose hair is messy, a stand-in for dirty, which is just a short walk to laziness. Not far behind laziness is dishonesty. Charles Dickens couldn’t have done better.

“Please, sir? Can I have some more?” pathetically begs Oliver Twist in a room full of dirty, thieving orphans.

There is plenty we can do as a nation and a state to help the poorest of our citizens build lives that take them out of poverty. For starters, our country should fully fund SNAP, otherwise known as food stamps, which is nine times better at delivering food to hungry people than food banks.

I also applaud Gov. Mike DeWine for recently promoting the science of teaching reading and the importance of strong schools. As he’s pointed out, a qualified workforce attracts businesses to Ohio.

There is also much important work to be done locally. In fact, that’s often where the greatest impact occurs.

I worked this past school year in an Akron Public Schools’ elementary building with some of the poorest students in the district. These students may have many underserved needs, but they are as clean and well-groomed as any student body in an affluent district.

And most of children in the school where I tutor come from families that clearly love them — even the students whose parents do not prioritize getting their children to school regularly.

How do I know? Because of the way these students engage with others — openly and without fear, the way children who are regularly spoken to as full humans interact with other adults.

One 6-year-old girl, whom I reassigned to my more advanced reading group, told me her mother was fired for getting into a fight at work. This girl draws whenever she’s given the chance. Her drawings of people show an understanding of proportion and detail combined with heartwarming whimsy. In her portrait of me, I sport cat ears and a tail, along with my glasses.

One of her students drew this portrait of columnist Holly Christensen.

An older student, whose family lacks permanent housing, loves to read. She is chronically absent and likely wouldn’t need tutoring if she attended regularly. When she is in school, she seeks me out and we often talk about the books she’s reading.

The math program I teach to four fourth grade boys includes a story about a boy who was given money by his grandparents and then spent it on foolish things until he was broke.

“Why doesn’t he go around and mow his neighbors’ lawns?” these 9-year-olds adamantly suggested.

“That’s what he should do,” they said, indicating that working is a no-brainer solution.

Contrary to what some believe, poverty is complex, particularly multigenerational poverty.

In his book, “Rosa Lee,” based upon his Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative series for the Washington Post, Leon Dash provides an extended, and often harrowing, profile of a woman and family shackled in multigenerational poverty.

The book includes sociological research on what led to the Great Migration, in which Black Americans left the South in large numbers starting in 1910. Dash then explores the history of those who, like Rosa Lee’s family, settled in Washington D.C.

Rosa Lee had eight children and a life filled with the struggles of the underclass, including crimes related to addiction and sex work. What she was not, however, was dirty or lazy. Her small Section 8 apartment housed several family members. It was always spotless.

By the end of the seventh chapter of “Rosa Lee,” the stories of her and her family were so unendingly bleak, I didn’t know if I could finish the book.

Fortunately, Chapter 8 highlights two of Rosa Lee’s children who rose out of poverty. Each credits an adult who reached out to them when they were children. For one it was a social worker, for the other it was a teacher.

Again I ask, what do poor people look like? In my experience, mostly like everyone else.

Poverty is not an unsolvable problem. Strong national and state policies combined with local outreach can effect substantial change. Dismissing those among us who are poor as unworthy of our time and help for any reason is not just morally wrong, it is a loss of opportunity for everyone.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, June 11, 2023.

Akron Public Schools has a leadership crisis.

In response to the pandemic, Akron schools remained remote for all students — with no exceptions — from March 2020 until March 2021. Yet by August 2020, well-publicized reports concluded that the educational costs of not allowing any students into the buildings for instruction were far greater than the risks presented by COVID.

The month after finally allowing students back into the buildings, the district hired a new superintendent, Christine Fowler Mack. Soon thereafter, and for several months, public disagreements among the superintendent, the school board and the teachers union left them all looking like cliques in a cafeteria food fight.

The dysfunction of those making important decisions for Akron’s students escalated and in January 2023 a teachers strike was narrowly averted. Days later, Superintendent Fowler Mack resigned.

The leadership deficit in Akron’s schools could not come at a worse time. Students in poorer districts have always fallen behind their richer counterparts, which was exacerbated by the pandemic. Researchers at the Education Recovery Scorecard have analyzed data from more than 7,800 communities in 41 states, resulting in some grim findings as reported in the New York Times:

“In 2019, the typical student in the poorest 10 percent of districts scored 1½ years behind the national average for his or her year — and almost four years behind students in the richest 10 percent of districts — in both math and reading.

“By 2022, the typical student in the poorest districts had lost three-quarters of a year in math, more than double the decline of students in the richest districts. The declines in reading scores were half as large as in math and were similarly much larger in poor districts than rich districts.”

I am a substitute tutor in an APS elementary building with some of the district’s most disadvantaged students. I am also a parent of a student in an APS elementary building with a population that is, on average, middle class. In both roles, I have witnessed some of the district’s most pressing issues.

Attendance

Post-pandemic attendance in Akron schools, like many urban districts nationwide, is devastatingly abysmal. Ohio requires 180 days of instruction each school year. I have students who have missed 50, 60 or more days this year. And when you break it down by hours per school year, it’s worse because chronically absent students routinely arrive late on the days that they do attend. Some of my students would not need tutoring if they attended regularly, while others exhibit learning disabilities. Yet because of the chronic absenteeism, the district is resistant to testing this second group of students for additional supports. Teachers, building administrators and staff in ancillary programs, such as Project Rise, which provides support for families experiencing housing insecurity, reach out to guardians in multiple ways. If attendance doesn’t improve, eventually the cases are referred to the courts where they typically languish.

Nothing being done now demonstrably addresses chronic absenteeism. This is a dire problem the next superintendent, school board and legal system need to prioritize with the utmost urgency.

Discipline

Yes, Akron schools have a discipline problem. For the most difficult cases, there are three go-to solutions: Temporary placement in the SOAR (Student Outreach Alternative Resources) program, moving a child to another building in the district and, if all else fails, placing the child at the Bridges Learning Center.

Bridges

Of the three, only the Bridges school seems to have any beneficial impact. According to the district’s website, Bridges “is an alternative school for students in grades K-12 that provides enhanced support for children with emotional or behavioral needs.”

However, and not surprisingly, Bridges does not have enough spots for the students who qualify. Are there federal pandemic dollars available to expand Bridges? Are there other resources the district can tap into to expand Bridges placement? All potential possibilities should be investigated and pursued, again, with the utmost urgency.

SOAR

The SOAR program, located in the district’s Conrad Ott building, is an independent organization staffed by its own employees who are not APS teachers. Theoretically, students with behavior problems are sent to SOAR for several days to address behavioral issues with counseling and academic supports. In reality, the many students sent to SOAR whom I know simply spent their days doing school work online. They received neither assessments to determine why they have behavioral issues nor coaching or counseling to improve their behavior. Essentially, teachers and classmates in the home schools are given a few days’ break from a child’s behavioral issues before the student returns and the disruptive behaviors inevitably resume.

A new superintendent might consider replacing the SOAR program with something run by the district where students learn appropriate ways to manage frustrations. This would benefit not only these students, but the instructional time of all students.

Placement in a different building

Finally, moving kids with severe behavior issues to different buildings is a lose-lose scenario. Let me be clear — these students are going from one standard school to another standard school, not one that specializes in behavior issues. They are taken from everyone and everything they know and shipped off to an entirely new environment.

I’ve witnessed these students arrive at my building and promptly express understandable fear and anger. One 8-year-old threw desks and chairs on his first day. Another was suspended for fighting on her first day.

According to the National Institutes of Health, “Youth who switch schools are more likely to demonstrate a wide array of negative behavioral and educational outcomes, including dropping out of high school.”

Why would anyone believe switching a student’s placement from one standard school to another standard school magically solve behavioral problems? It only makes them worse.

Chromebooks should stay at school

For every elementary student who does homework on their district-supplied Chromebook, 100 or more use them to stay up late playing video games, watching YouTube and scrolling social media.

Young children regularly fall asleep in class or during tutoring and state testing. Every day, every classroom.

The default should be for the computers to stay at the school where there is plenty of time to do the assigned Chromebook work, known as iReady. Exceptions can be arranged between guardians and teachers. Never in our lifetimes have students needed the best possible programs to address systemic deficits that were made significantly worse by a year of remote learning. The search for a new superintendent is underway and three school board members are up for reelection this fall. Yes, Akronites need to demand the hiring of the best possible leaders for the schools. But the gravity of today’s issues require the robust cooperation of our courts, our city officials as well as state and federal representatives.

To rescue an entire generation of students from inadequate preparation, which is a setup for a lifetime of struggle and — too often — failure, requires the implementation of documented successful educational practices. It won’t come easily or cheaply, but we must do better. The alternative is a future nobody wants.

This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, May 28, 2023.