By Ivy Brashear
Broadcast version by Nadia Ramlagan
Reporting for the YES! Media-Kentucky News Connection Collaboration
BEREA, Ky. -- Colleges and universities are closing across the United States to help slow the spread of the new coronavirus. But while some students are able to continue their studies online, others can't, and they have a different set of challenges that could limit their ability to even make it back home to their families.
Berea College in eastern Kentucky announced March 10 that it would be moving all classes online for the rest of the semester, and students who were able would need to move off campus. Berea President Lyle Roelofs said every consideration was made to ensure their students were cared for as this transition was made.
The administration has allowed some students, particularly international students or those who may be experiencing hardships, to remain in their dorms through the end of the semester. Dining services also are staying as operational as possible to accommodate those students.
Students had to be off campus by March 14, with some flexibility as needed. Classes moved online on the next Monday, March 16, with the school working to make arrangements with students who may not have internet access. About 150-200 of 1,650 total students are expected to remain on campus through the end of the spring semester.
But Berea College also is a work-study school, where all students must have a federal student labor job. Roelofs said all students will continue being paid their normal wages biweekly for those jobs, even if they are no longer on campus to continue working. Students were also advanced $100 from their upcoming paychecks to help with travel expenses as they moved off campus.
"Our approach was based on the knowledge that many of our students really don't have the means that you'd expect from other students at other institutions," Roelofs said. "Continuing to support them will help with greater income needs they'll have at home."
Some of Berea College's students may not have a stable home to return to.
After Berea College's made the announcement to move classes online, the nonprofit Stay Together Appalachian Youth Project began working immediately to fill those gaps.
STAY Project, based in New Market, Tennessee, is a regional network of people aged 14 to 30 from Alabama, Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. Much of their membership is from the Central Appalachian region of those states, and includes people of color, youth from the LGBTQ community, and those living with low income. The mission of the organization is to develop the means for youth to remain and work in their hometowns, instead of contributing to decadeslong out-migration to urban centers.
STAY project coordinator Lou Murrey said people within the STAY network who live in or near Berea reached out to offer housing support to students after the announcement. The steering committee responded immediately, checking in with STAY members to assess their needs.
Murrey said some young people in Central Appalachia come from unstable or unsafe family structures and are not able to return home. STAY is considering how best to help them as their living situations rapidly change. In particular, they're looking for ways to help students whose summer housing options may now have shifted.
"As closures continue to happen, there will be many more young people in crisis," Murrey said, adding that many of these young people were already living in crisis, and these changes will only amplify the challenges they already face.
Berea College's administration knew that they'd need to do more to support their student body. The college established a fund to help students with financial need move back home. Roelofs said about 50 students had taken advantage of this fund by March 13.
The school also is working to provide students with cellphone hotspot technology so they could continue to work online. Many students come from places where internet service is spotty if not nonexistent, and Roelofs said they'd need a way to access the internet to continue their class work online.
Those connections are important not just for classes. The STAY Project regularly hosts gatherings throughout the year to provide safe space for their membership to commune with each other and discuss the unique issues and challenges they face living in Appalachia.
Murrey said STAY is developing plans for their membership to stay connected and reduce isolation they may already feel because of geography and culture.
"Capitalism is already so isolating, even when we're not living in rural spaces," Murrey said. "It's going to be really important to check in with each other and make sure we're OK and staying connected." The group is hosting a call this week for members to connect, talk about what they're facing in their communities and hopefully de-stress.
They are also coordinating with the Kentucky Student Environmental Coalition, whose members are largely college students, to create a mutual aid fund to help young people across the region in anticipation of job losses because of businesses closing and laying off employees.
The fund will prioritize Black, Indigenous and youth of color, as well as young people who are LGBTQ, disabled, chronically ill or otherwise immunocompromised. It would provide for rent, health care, child care, and any other payments young people need to make while out of work.
Murrey said the school administration was "incredibly proud" of the way STAY members and other young people have responded to this crisis in their own communities. They cite one example of a STAY steering committee member who has started a mutual aid Facebook group in Pocahontas County, West Virginia, that gained 300 members in one day offering to help others in their community.
Other mutual aid groups are popping up in northeastern Tennessee, Murrey said, and Radical Kindred in western North Carolina is offering much-needed support to the LGBTQ community in Boone. In particular, they're increasing support for the trans community, which is likely to face increased obstacles as the country moves further into crisis response, and medical care for this population becomes more precarious.
Roelofs said the support of the campus community, faculty, staff, and students, as well as the support of the larger Berea community, has been essential in making the decision to move to online learning, and students moving off campus.
"Most people really don't understand the reality of this cohort of students," Roelofs said. "This is a cohort that already faces enormous challenges. This is not a population that does a good job of advocating for themselves, and it really requires institutional leadership to make it happen."
"There is a lot of uncertainty of how this [response to COVID-19] is going to happen," Murrey said. "We need to take care of each other now before it gets worse. We all have the tools to do it; we just need to be thoughtful about how we respond."
This story was produced with original reporting from Ivy Brashear for YES! Media.
Read Brashnear's full story at YesMagazine.org.
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Leaders of a teachers' union in Louisiana are voicing concerns about a package of bills they say would have the effect of dissolving labor unions in the state.
The list includes House Bill 571, which would prohibit public agencies from paying union workers for the time they do anything union-related, even if it's on paid leave.
If passed, said Roberto Furtado, a special-education teacher in the Jefferson Parish Public School System, the bills would end collective bargaining and prohibit payroll deductions for union dues. Furtado said all this would make it harder for new teachers to join the union, further silencing their voices.
"If they make it more difficult for the new teachers, young teachers, to get involved," he said, "then basically, it's a roadblock so they're probably more than likely going to just not do it."
House Bill 572 would prohibit public agencies from collective bargaining with unions, except for police and firefighters. Similar bills have been introduced in multiple states by conservative groups.
The teachers' union has posted petitions on its website for teachers to sign and send to their lawmakers.
Educators in Louisiana have said they're dealing with low pay, overcrowded classrooms and school safety issues. However, state lawmakers have advanced a budget proposal that would cut teacher pay, and the House Appropriations Committee forwarded a spending plan that reduces a $2,000 pay stipend teachers got this school year to $1,300 next year.
Furtado said the end result is forcing good teachers out of the profession.
"Teachers are an invaluable resource for our community, and so we need good, well-rounded educators that want to be there and continue their jobs to help these young men and women, because again, they are our future," he insisted. "That's kind of corny to say this, but yes, our children are our future. If you don't take care of them, where does our future lie?"
The legislative committee also allocated $25 million for a differential teacher compensation strategy for the second year in a row. The union opposed the strategy, because it said the raises wouldn't be permanent and could be taken away from year to year.
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By Lane Wendell Fischer for the Shasta Scout via The Daily Yonder.
Broadcast version by Suzanne Potter for California News Service for the Public News Service/Daily Yonder Collaboration
Hiring and maintaining a qualified educator workforce is often a primary concern for rural schools across the country, requiring local education leaders to create innovative solutions.
The University of Wyoming’s College of Education has recently partnered with local community colleges across the state to repair a pipeline for future Career and Technical Education (CTE) teachers at high schools and community colleges.
CTE programs offer students an array of skills-based learning opportunities for many high-demand industries ranging from construction, to nursing, to marketing.
For decades, Wyoming has relied on traditional methods to fill out its CTE teacher workforce. After completing a two-year associate’s degree at their community college, students could either enter the trades or take another two years of teacher training.
“It was very much a fork in the road,” said Rob Hill, a CTE consultant for the University of Wyoming and president of SkillsUSA Wyoming. Hill became a Wyoming CTE teacher through this traditional path.
“You had to take life off and go to school,” Hill said. “That limited a lot of people, especially students with families, jobs, and homes.”
As it turned out, most students never completed the final two years of teacher training and just entered the trades after the first two years at their community college, Hill said in an interview with the Daily Yonder.
This outdated pipeline has contributed to a shortage of both CTE teachers and skilled workers in the state.
According to a 2023 report from the Wyoming Professional Teaching Standards Board, the median age of CTE teachers in Wyoming schools is 52, and national numbers are similar. Compare this to the average age of all teachers in the U.S., which is just over 42.
On average, a state employee in Wyoming retires at 62. This means that in the next 7 to 10 years, Wyoming could lose close to half of its CTE workforce to retirement.
“We’ve seen a number of things that have impacted us and that rural part is very real,” Hill said.
In rural communities, a CTE program might only consist of one or two teachers. When that school loses a teacher, the whole program is at risk until a qualified replacement is found.
During a recent tour of Wyoming’s school districts, Jenna Shim, PhD and interim dean of the College of Education, learned that some high school CTE programs are closing down because they couldn’t find replacements.
“One CTE teacher shared with me that he has a specialty in welding, but he has to teach culinary arts,” Shim told the Daily Yonder. “I could see welding and construction, but welding and culinary arts seem like a far stretch.”
And it can be difficult to attract new talent to small schools and communities.
“We tend to do best with people that are invested in that community previously and become teachers, as opposed to bringing in teachers into small communities,” Hill said.
The CTE Domino Effect in Rural Communities
Adding to the difficulty of attracting new teachers is a domino effect caused by current teacher shortages, Shim and Hill said.
A shortage of educators leads to a shortage of high school CTE programs, which leads to a shortage of students pursuing CTE in the state, followed by a shortage of tradespeople in the state, and a shortage of essential services, which, in turn, leads to less attractive communities.
On top of educational advancement for students, repairing CTE teacher pipelines through state and local partnerships helps assemble the next generation of rural water experts, plumbers, electricians, technicians, mechanics, and more, Hill said.
“It has a trickle-down effect into the stability of the community,” Shim said.
And in rural communities, small fluctuations in population, programs, and services can be especially catastrophic — or especially beneficial.
“It doesn’t seem like a big deal if you don’t have one teacher,” Hill said. “But that one teacher in a town of 2000 people that teaches welding, where you have a huge welding industry, that has an extremely large impact.”
The broken pipeline has also raised economic concerns. “Without a sufficient number of teachers, it’s hard to prepare a sufficient workforce,” Shim said.
Two key industries in Wyoming are energy and tourism. Both rely heavily on skilled workers. And both are susceptible to booms and busts that give local communities economic whiplash.
“Over the last decade especially, there’s been a real desire to diversify our workforce,” Hill said. “And that means a different generation of career and technical education, like manufacturing, cybersecurity, and data analysis.”
Repairing the Pipeline
The biggest problem in the previous CTE teacher pipeline was continuity, Hill said. The pathway to teacher certification in rural communities must be both attractive and achievable.
This spring, the College of Education piloted a new course that aims to do both by exposing community college students to CTE teaching before they complete their associate’s degree and decide between trades work or teaching.
“Creating a more seamless pathway is a real goal here,” Hill explained.
The bridge course will be offered each semester in partnership with all eight community colleges in the state and is inherently low stakes. The course credits can be applied toward an associate’s degree at the community college, toward their teaching degree at the university, or toward any other bachelor’s degree they pursue.
In the course, students get a taste of what a career in CTE teaching is like. Coordinated by Hill, the course is one dose online learning and one dose on-site learning. Hill leads the online classroom, where students learn about different national and statewide topics. “But students will learn about how it’s implemented locally,” Hill said.
Each community college has a community college professional and a school district professional that serve as a mentor and safety net for local students, introducing them to CTE leaders at both levels.
One area of misconception is how much CTE teachers are paid, Shim said.
“I think wages scare them most,” Hill said. “But in Wyoming, our hourly wage is higher than many of the trades folks. We have pensions. We have healthcare. It’s a lot more competitive than folks think it is.”
The organization of the course is a masterclass in rural ingenuity. By using technology, the course eliminates long distance travel to the university campus in Laramie on the southern border of the state. It allows students to remain in their local communities, while still being connected to the state’s CTE teacher network.
“We knew we had a statewide problem and we needed to create a statewide solution, or in this case, a local solution for a statewide problem,” Hill said. “This is about connecting people in Wyoming. Because we have these vast distances between us, we have to have a way to connect people.”
Twenty-two students are currently enrolled in the pilot course. Half of the inaugural cohort are community college students. The other half includes veterans, community college instructors, K-12 instructors, and paraprofessionals who are exploring their future career options.
The course has garnered support from state legislators, the university, the colleges, local high schools, local business, and from the students themselves.
Each of the enrolled students is taking the course tuition-free, thanks to scholarships from local businesses and private donors.
“Word is getting out,” Shim said. “I think that’s a testimony for how important this work is.”
Strong CTE programs lead to strong communities, Shim and Hill said. A lot of high school CTE programs are embedded into community culture. Organizations like FFA provide opportunities for social gathering and community service, for example.
“We’ve come up with a mutually beneficial solution and this takes a partnership and teamwork,” Hill said. “No significant advances take place without a group of us working together in a mutually beneficial system.”
Lane Wendell Fischer wrote this article for the Shasta Scout via The Daily Yonder.
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Texas Lieutenant Gov. Dan Patrick has released 57 "interim charges," the topics he wants Senate committees to study in preparation for the 89th legislative session next year.
Four charges are for the committee overseeing public education. They include improving reading and math readiness in grade school, and redesigning the state's standardized tests.
Eli Melandrez, government relations associate for the American Federation of Teachers-Texas, said educators are surprised the list does not include pay increases for teachers or controversial school vouchers, which use public money to pay for private schooling.
"It's interesting to see both of those key issues absent from the interim charges," Melandrez observed. "Across the state we've seen school closures; we've seen teachers being let go. We've seen a greater percentage of our teacher workforce as uncertified educators."
Two unsuccessful special sessions were held in the past few months, in an attempt to pass a school voucher proposal. Other charges for public schools include examining how school districts used COVID-19 funding, and monitoring the implementation of bills passed in the last session.
Patrick also directed the Higher Education Committee to analyze faculty senates, monitor bans on DEI policies at colleges and universities and revise policies for faculty tenure.
Melandrez noted their union is now affiliated with the American Association of University Professors and members are concerned the lieutenant governor is inserting his own political views into the education system.
"That's worrisome for us," Melandrez emphasized. "In public education and higher education, we are seeing a concerted effort to minimize educator voices."
Patrick also wants senators to review university antisemitism policies and protecting the First Amendment rights of faculty, staff and students. The next legislative session convenes Jan. 14, 2025.
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