Kennedy School of Government

Let’s Talk Black Education

The honeymoon is over in communities where the Delta variant has taken hold.  Since back to school, I’ve spent weeks filling in for principals, supervising children, checking children’s temperatures and providing them masks, directing traffic in the parking lot, picking up garbage, wiping down cafeteria tables — all of which are required to run safe schools in these times. I’ve talked to other heads of schools that can say the same thing or something similar since the start of this school year. The same culprit continues to affect us all — COVID-19. However, normally we have a village to manage these tasks. Now, we don’t.

Black in School: Why Do CA Black Students Face Half a Billion Dollar School Funding Gap Amid Resurging Coronavirus?

I cannot aptly describe just how complicated running a school has become in the era of COVID-19.  New categories of jobs have been created in schools just to contact trace, test, and track the escalation of the virus as it spreads.  The county health department gave our school a one-page “decision tree” last year to guide our response when we got a COVID case.  Now the document is literally called a “decision forest” and it’s three times as long.