Unpopular Opinion: Wilmington Students' Voices Are Missing in K-12 Decision-Making during COVID-19

This past year, our nation has faced a number of new challenges negotiating solutions for combating the COVID-19 global health crisis. The pandemic has not only wreaked havoc on the public health of our communities, it has also had a significant impact on K-12 public schools all across the United States. When it comes to education diplomacy for K-12 public school, mediation and negotiations are an integral part of transforming educational agendas and solving varies types of education-related problems. Together, these strategies work to maximize the interests of all parties involved without provoking undue risk, expenses, and perhaps resentment in the operation of business.

In Delaware, state and local governments have struggled to remediate numerous complex consequences of the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) decision on Wilmington students, including the evolution of 'choice' and 'charter', inadequate funding, and lack of teacher diversity in schools. But what happens when students and their families are left out of the mediations and negotiations? What happens when primary decision-making regarding new solutions are confined to closed doors? We are left with recycled leadership and decade-long empty promises from state leaders and government officials about “narrowing the gap” and “providing additional resources for children from disadvantaged backgrounds and English learners”.

These historical practices have become common place and routine with regard to the educational futures of Wilmington students, who continue to be disproportionately impacted by in-house policies and laws at various time periods throughout the course of U.S. history. Even worse, despite past efforts of civil rights leaders and community advocates to disrupt an inadequate school districting system and to re-allocate funds equitably, decisions are made without adequate care or attention to the voices of those most directly impacted by education inequities—Wilmington students.

But let’s be clear. Putting another band-aid on the issue through programming is not going to solve the problem. We cannot place the current state of education for Wilmington students on a Monopoly game board; we cannot create a situation where all students across various needs are placed on “Go” and tasked with rolling a pair of dice in hopes of drawing 4 and landing on the ‘Opportunity Fund’. Simply putting a ‘dollar on the dime’ will not reform a K-12 public school system that is plagued with remnants of Jim Crow, and it will not alleviate the systemic disadvantages that were laid at the inception of its design.

Instead, in the midst of a global pandemic, it is imperative that we join the minds of both longstanding and emerging community leaders, as well as dedicated organizers and researchers to work on improving state and local leadership relations and develop new plans for combating the impact that COVID-19 has had on K-12 education in Wilmington. These challenges, if not met with diplomacy and strategies for development, will certainly remain longstanding and prove difficult to quickly overcome. A three-way intersection of strategies is necessary not only for simple engagement in cross-sectional performative acts of business, but to also build a longstanding culture of negotiation and mediation between state and local government officials and community leaders.

At this current moment in time, one of the primary goals of educational diplomacy in Wilmington, DE, should center around engaging K-12 student advocacy groups that have emerged in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, like the Black Student Coalition. The Black Student Coalition, led by founder Tariah Hyland (Senior, St. George's Technical High School), and co-founder Elise Sampson (Junior, Smyrna High School), is a high school student-led group that provides opportunities for students to partake in collective community building and share what's on their minds about the COVID-19 virtual learning experience. Over the past several months, organizations like Delaware-CAN and the Wilmington Center for Education Equity & Policy (WCEEP) have served and will continue to serve as an available platform for student voice conversation(s). 

Here are three suggested strategies and recommendations that government officials should consider when seeking to engage in educational diplomacy for Wilmington students: active listening sessions with Wilmington residents, student- and family-focused conversation about solutions, and conducting a critical evaluation of resources and services at all levels of government (i.e. local, state, and federal).

1.     Active listening

Active listening sessions with Wilmington residents and student-led groups should not be considered on an opt-in basis; they should be strongly advised and considered culturally appropriate, especially for elected leaders that are tasked with decision-making in the K-12 arena.

Without engaging in active listening of students, it would be difficult to develop a clear understanding of the various interests and challenges involved when trying to solve a problem. The most challenging areas of compromise often stem from friction between dominant, traditional ideologies of government and the indigenous cultures of a local community. Therefore, it is important for government leaders to learn and understand the ecology and schooling culture of the communities and schools that Wilmington students reside in. This may involve calling upon all districts to join in on the work that the New Castle County Vo-tech School District has started, and to share what forums they have put in place to elevate the student voice and receive detailed data on what their students are experiencing. Only then can there truly be an opportunity to meet the various needs and interests of all diplomatic parties involved.

2.    Focused conversations on solution development

When seeking to develop solutions for K-12 schools, having student-focused conversations are crucial for identifying the problem(s) at hand. In general, there are often many ways for identifying a problem including reading, observation, direct physical contact with the issue, and engaging in verbal discourse with others. With respect to educational diplomacy, all three forms of identification are necessary for finding the common thread of potential conflicts and resolutions between state and local governments with regard to K-12 education.

In Delaware, one major issue that ought to be at the top of the list of solution-focused conversations is school re-districting for Wilmington students. Currently, Wilmington students are assigned to schools across multiple districts and charter systems, which negates the opportunity for natural support systems to form among parents and students to advance learning. WCEEP has voiced the need to establish a standard level of engagement across districts and a to develop a mechanism for holding educators and support staff accountable for meeting the established standards. Currently, there lies significant variation between and across schools and districts in relation to the implementation of remote learning leaving many questions as to whether or not remote learning was implemented in schools across districts, and if so, how? For these reasons, it is vital that negotiations and mediations for addressing enduring equity issues, as well as the collateral effects of COVID-19 are inclusive of Wilmington students and their families.

3.    Critical frameworks for evaluations and analyses

Use of critical frameworks for analysis should not only be interwoven throughout the entire process of mediation and negotiation, they should most certainly follow conversations about developing new solutions as well.

Critical evaluations and analysis should include emphasizing student storytelling and recognizing it as an essential part of the research design process for evaluating virtual learning experiences and lessons learned during school closures in 2020. Critical evaluations and analyses should also involve intervals of asking questions of clarification in order to ensure that there is a mutual level of understanding between all parties involved. This type of participatory discourse will allow students, members of the community, and government leaders to embrace inevitable differences in perspectives and values, and to find common ground in solutions-building. More importantly, it will produce the necessary culture of collaboration for all parties to work together.

So what's next for Wilmington schools...?

As been made clear over the past several months, the future of schooling as it was prior to 2020 will not be returning to its former path. Therefore, it is imperative that government leaders and elected officials join Wilmington students and their families in mobilizing and reclaiming local schools.