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Students bear brunt of COVID-19 inequality
By JULIE GRACE | April 2021
Raul Vasquez just wants his kids back in the classroom. They are good students, and it pains him to see them lying in bed on their laptops for six hours a day for their classes.
Two of his children are high-schoolers in the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS). A third — a seventh-grader — is homeschooled, a decision he made last year when he suspected the shutdown due to COVID-19 would last longer than initially promised.
The Vasquez family’s situation is not unique. Some students finally began returning to their classrooms in the third week of April. But for more than a year, parents of the 62,600 students in Wisconsin’s largest school district, 82% of whom are economically disadvantaged, have faced tough decisions regarding their children’s education. Should they keep the kids in their current school? Send them to another school that provides better options? Allow them to attend in-person? Keep them at home for virtual learning?
“They just need to go back. It’s all gone on long enough,” Vasquez says. “If we as a community in Milwaukee cannot defend our kids, then that’s a big red flag.”
To read more of this article, click here. Permission to reprint is granted as long as the author and Badger Institute are properly cited.
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