Education Must Become a Community Imperative

Last Friday night, Chris Hayes closed his show on MSNBC with a commentary on schooling. As an education consultant working with schools in different parts of the country, I share those views. However, I don’t think Mr. Hayes went far enough in emphasizing the necessity of a community-wide approach for resuming schools in the fall and beyond.

The problem starts with the language that is being used. Instead of talking about “reopening schools,” we should be talking about how to safely resume in-person education. Too much emphasis has been placed on the school buildings themselves and the mechanics of the re-opening process rather than on the real purpose of these action – to safely foster high-quality, in-person learning for all our children for as long as possible. The result has been a profound lack of creativity and a fairly narrow set of solutions, particularly in light of the complications created by the resurgence of the coronavirus in so many states and communities across the country.

Mr. Hayes suggested that some families might choose to form in-home learning groups when their children were not in the school building to accommodate parent schedules and work requirements. He rightly noted that such actions could undermine efforts to keep students, educators, families, and the community safe from the coronavirus. Such a result is not inevitable if we take a more creative, flexible, and community-wide approach to education. These home groups could be explicitly integrated into students’ formal learning experiences. Schools could use similar small multi-age groupings when those students were in school classrooms to limit the potential for community spread. Teachers could work remotely with parents and those students when they were at home to integrate their educational experiences in both sites. 

In fact, communities could take advantage of available spaces in the community, like public libraries, Boys and Girls Club, YMCAs and YWCAs, museums, and formal day cares to intentionally create small groups of students and continue in-person education outside the school building. Communities could use distance learning methods to connect teachers and other school staff directly with adults working in those sites, along with parents, to ensure that these adults could more successfully support students’ learning and foster greater in-person education. These new approaches to education could foster more equitable learning opportunities for all students rather than seeing existing inequities widen for many marginalized groups, particularly students of color.

To safely resume in-person education for all students in the fall and to sustain that education throughout the school year, we must strengthen and expand the connections and authentic cooperation between schools, community agencies, businesses, and families. We must accept that one size does NOT fit all. Instead, the needs of different students and the changing conditions in each community demand the adoption of new, more flexible responses. Communities must recognize that creativity is a necessity to be embraced, not avoided. 

Make no mistake – this effort will be complicated and will involve hard work. It will require Federal and state governments to provide significant funding and practical guidance to communities. Crafting, implementing, and refining these plans will require resources and time from many people in the communities as well. More important, it will require all of us, particularly those working in education, to approach education differently rather than just seeking to restore what was familiar and comfortable from pre-pandemic days. To succeed, education must become a collective, community-wide imperative.