“Some, they had it, their spouse and child had it, and now they’re recovering,” Cooper said. A similar share of staff members has become infected or had a loved one become ill one staffer is currently in an intensive care unit. Many families have had to move in with relatives due to lost jobs or family members needing to self-isolate, creating cramped quarters that can distract from online learning, Mellman said.Īt University Heights Charter School, which enrolls more than 900 students from preschool to eighth-grade, nearly 20% of students have reported having a family member contract the virus, said Executive Director Tamara Cooper. As of Friday, more than 6,100 city residents had tested positive for the virus and 485 residents had died.Īt Mellman’s high school, which educates just over 380 students, three students have lost family members to the virus and many others have had relatives fall ill. Schools are on the frontlines of the pandemic, which has dealt an especially heavy blow to Newark. “In some ways, it’s just trying to stop the bleeding.” Offering aid amid the coronavirus “We’re doing online learning, but it’s just not the same as being there with kids,” said William Mellman, principal of Great Oaks Legacy High School. But they are also thinking ahead to the summer and fall when they will have to help ease the psychic burden that students have shouldered during the school shutdown, while also confronting the academic regression that many students will suffer after months of virtual classes.
Phil Murphy announced this week that classrooms will remain off-limits for the rest of the school year, Newark charter schools are settling in for several more weeks of virtual learning. Functioning independently of the city’s traditional public school district, the charter schools have scrambled separately to keep students learning during the lockdown: They gave out thousands of laptops to their families, developed their own virtual learning routines, and offered online counseling.
Nearly 20 different organizations run charter schools in Newark, including national networks such as KIPP and more than a dozen local operators. Newark’s charter schools, which educate more than a third of the city’s roughly 50,000 public-school students, have also been figuring things out on the fly in the weeks since the pandemic forced school buildings statewide to close. “It’s been a lesson for all of us we’ve been learning and figuring it out as we go.” Howard is feeling super blue today, can you help me?’ Then they’ll give me ideas that I can do, and in that they identify things that they can do,” said Howard, who teaches at Upper Roseville Academy in Newark’s North Ward, part of the KIPP charter school network. Then Howard’s own grandmother contracted the disease caused by the virus - a calamity that Howard has tried to turn into a learning opportunity for her students. Recently, one of her kindergarten students turned up for a Zoom lesson wearing a face mask both of his parents were infected with the coronavirus. Yet for this Newark educator, there are constant reminders that the new normal is anything but. With her regular check-in calls and daily Zoom lessons, La’Krisha Howard has quickly adapted to teaching during the pandemic.
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