FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WOWO): The impact of COVID-19 and the remote learning that came, as a result, is clear: hundreds of Fort Wayne Community Schools students have simply stopped showing up for class.
FWCS School Board member Steve Corona tells our Partners in News at ABC 21 at least 900 students are absent, saying that some families have “just given up,” and adding that it’s going to be a difficult year for some students to advance to the next grade.
FWCS staffers are trying to get in contact with the students and their families, but they’re not having much luck.
Part of the problem is a lack of access to broadband internet for several thousand FWCS students; another part is the lack of a structured and predictable learning environment.
Other area school districts are reporting similar problems.
3 comments
Lack of internet is a BS excuse. MOST people in the FWCS District have access to internet. The whole online thing was a bad idea and a disaster from the start. Kids need to be in school.
Fact! FWCS is not the only school with these issues. It’s literally every school including the lower populated areas of 1350 and less students in a district! What’s even worse is some teachers are refusing to work or mass quarantining classrooms over a “possible close contact” in order to remote work.
Kids need to be IN school. Having said that, one school has gone fully remote, Lincoln Elementary, due to staffing issues. Of 29 teachers, as many as 9 were out either with Coronavirus, or to quarantine because of contact with someone that has Coronavirus. And as many as 8 teaching assistants. The answer is clear…kid’s need to be in school. But what if the school has staff dropping like flies? There is no one available to teach the class. That in and of itself is the real issue. Moving the kids around from teacher to teacher will not work for the classroom sizes are not large enough to accomodate 30 kids who are supposed to be socially distanced. It’s a real challenge.