The San Francisco teacher strike was a harbinger. As school budgets tighten, the gap between union demands and what districts can responsibly afford is widening. How leaders respond in moments like this matters — not just for their districts’ long-term fiscal health, but for children they serve today, and for years to come.

As in San Francisco, unions will make demands that benefit their members. District leaders, wanting to avoid a high-profile labor conflict, will fold. 

The consequences come later.

To balance the budget, districts will issue pink slips, cut some electives, Advanced Placement classes and sports, eliminate supports for high-needs children, freeze hiring and close schools. 

Some families will leave. Enrollment will drop. Revenues will fall. The districts will begin a downward financial spiral. 

High-poverty schools will suffer the most. With more junior staff, they’ll be first on the list for pink slips. And with higher turnover rates, a hiring freeze could leave a senior French teacher teaching math (earning $140,000 after a raise that delivered double the cash to veteran educators).  

With so much of their budgets tied up in union negotiated agreements, districts won’t be able to compete with charter schools. Even more families will leave. The cycle will continue.

It’s a dire forecast. And completely foreseeable.

The problem isn’t so much with unions — they’re doing exactly what they are supposed to do: advocate aggressively for the interests of their voting members. 

Rather, districts need to learn to play their corresponding part — aggressively pursue what’s best for students amid constrained dollars. 

Those. Are. Different. Roles. 

Many district leaders, including those in San Francisco, appear uncomfortable with the head-to-head conflict that comes with labor negotiations, especially when unions align with their political sensibilities. That’s understandable. But discomfort is not an excuse for abdicating the district’s responsibility in labor conflicts.’

San Francisco board commissioner Matt Alexander misunderstood his role entirely when he praised the strike, saying he was “proud of these educators for standing up for what is right.”

When districts, like , offer the public little rationale for their proposals during a strike, they cede the narrative to unions that frame their demands as being “.” Unions, in contrast, work hard to win over parents and media, knowing that the strike works only as long as the public stays on the union’s side.

But with more strikes likely on the horizon, district leaders need to ensure that the public hears the other side. What does that look like? What should leaders do?

First, be clear about who controls revenues. It’s not the districts. Want more money in the system? Unions should take that up with their state legislature or with local voters. 

Explain tradeoffs. In West Contra Costa, California, a December strike resulted in $105 million in new costs and a massive budget gap. With some 80% to 90% of district spending on labor, the district will have no choice but to . San Francisco faces the same pressures — adding is the equivalent of reducing jobs for about 800 employees. That’s just the math. It means that schools could lose electives, AP classes and added .

Be crisp with numbers. San Francisco teacher salaries range from about $67,000 to $131,000, depending on experience and credits. The union’s ask was another $12,000 for senior teachers — and $6,000 for junior ones. Where the , district leaders can and should say so.  

Keep students at the center. Demands for would require whose families those same benefits. And it means more employees could be let go. The district’s job is to teach kids to read and do math, and in places like San Francisco, only about half of students are at grade level in math. If leaders believe that investments in counselors, social workers and specialists matter, means trading away these children’s future.

Expose gaps in union narratives: Unions claim larger raises would retain early-career teachers of color. But the resulting costs could trigger reductions in force — and under California’s , it is those same educators who would be laid off first.

Address long-running contract terms that don’t serve students. District leaders often lament that their hands are tied by decades-old provisions. But those contracts didn’t materialize on their own; districts signed them. If they are no longer serving students, or are actively constraining districts’ ability to do so, leaders have an obligation to address them.

Some district leaders mistakenly think federal labor law prevents them from being blunt with the public, and it is true that the California Public Employment Relations Board prohibits bargaining directly with employees outside negotiations. But it does not bar districts from publicly making their case or challenging union claims.

None of this is to suggest that district leaders should be mean, rude or dismissive, even when union rhetoric goes there. They can be firm and professional, remembering that families need to trust them to do what’s best for their children.

District leadership is not about avoiding hard conversations. ����’s about having them — clearly, publicly and with an unapologetic focus on students. 

Correction: An earlier version of this op-ed misidentified the organization overseeing the labor negotiations in San Francisco. It was the California Public Employment Relations Board that governed the talks.

was originally reported by Chabeli Carrazana of .��

Two years ago, Nicolle Orozco Forero walked into an in-home day care in Seattle, Washington, looking for a job. She was barely 22, a whole five feet tall — if that. But she was calm, focused. Her presence struck the owner, Stephanie Wishon, because it’s not easy to find qualified staff who can work with children with disabilities.

Orozco Forero had experience working with kids who had autism back in Colombia, so Wishon had her come in for a trial run and hired her after the first day. The children, who needed someone who had love and care to give in abundance, gravitated toward her. She was good at the hardest stuff. She changed diapers and outfits the moment they were soiled. She was vigilant; her kids stayed pristine. And she got them to do the things they wouldn’t do for other people, like say “ah” when it was time to get their teeth brushed or sit still long enough for her to twist a braid down their back.

Some people just have that way about them.

And people like Orozco Forero are exceptionally rare. Already, the staffing shortage in child care is near crisis levels. ����’s far — about of those families say they face significant difficulty finding care for their kids, partly because there are too few people with the ability, expertise or desire to work with their children. Immigrant women like Orozco Forero have been helping to fill that void. They now make up of all child care workers.

At home, Orozco Forero was also caring for her own young boys, one of whom started to show symptoms of a serious illness over the past two years that doctors have not yet been able to diagnose. She took some time off to care for him last year, before returning to the kids at Wishon’s day care.

Her work has kept an already precarious safety net together. Without women like Orozco Forero, families who have nowhere else to turn for care have to make difficult decisions about how to survive and keep their children safe. Without her, the safety net snaps.

And that’s exactly what happened on June 18, the day she was detained.

It was supposed to be a routine meeting with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Orozco Forero and her husband had been to all their monthly meetings for the past year and change, since their asylum charge was denied in April 2024.

The family — Orozco Forero; her husband, Juan Sebastian Moreno Acosta; and their two sons, Juan David, 7, and Daniel, 5 — fled Colombia two years ago. Moreno Acosta, a street vendor, had been persecuted by gangs .

After arriving in the United States, they sought the help of a lawyer with their asylum claim, but when they couldn’t pay his full fee ahead of their hearing, he pulled out. They represented themselves in court and lost the case. With no knowledge of the U.S. court system, they didn’t know they had 30 days to appeal the ruling, either. Ever since, ICE has been monitoring them, requiring they wear a wrist tracker and meet with an immigration officer once a month, sometimes more, according to a family member. (The 19th is not naming the family member to protect their identity.) ����’s unclear why ICE has allowed them to stay in the country all this time, though it’s not necessarily uncommon; ICE typically prioritized immigrants with felonies for deportation.

Orozco Forero had seen the reports of illegal immigrants being rounded up at their immigration appointments. President Donald Trump’s mass deportation effort has led to the detention of about , like Orozco Forero, who now make up of those detained. Her husband does have a misdemeanor reckless driving conviction for driving under the influence of alcohol on his record, but he completed a court-mandated alcohol course for that and has no other convictions.

Still, Orozco Forero wasn’t worried when she headed to her appointment on the morning of June 18. If ICE planned to detain her, Orozco Forero thought, they would have asked her to come with the boys, right?

And she had been doing everything right: She’d gone to all her appointments, taken documentation to show she was going to school at Green River Community College taking courses in English and early childhood education. She had completed a child care internship that trained her to open her own licensed in-home day care. Her licensure approval was set to arrive any moment, likely that same week, and the day care was just about ready to go.

But that morning, her family was still wary, asking her to share her location just in case.

Shortly after 10 a.m., Orozco Forero texted her family member: “They are going to deport us”

“Nicolle what happened? Nicolle answer me,” they texted back. “What do I do?”

“I can’t speak I feel like I’m going to faint,” Orozco Forero replied. And then: “I’m sorry it wasn’t what we expected.”

Two-and-a-half hours west, on the coast of Washington in a town called Southbend, Wishon was frantic. Orozco Forero had texted her, too. ICE was asking for the boys.

In two years, Wishon had grown incredibly close to Orozco Forero, who had cared for her own kids. After her family moved to the coast, Wishon rented out her house in Seattle to Orozco Forero, whose boys were excited to have a home with a yard.

Wishon’s husband, Gabriel, hopped into his truck and headed to Seattle. Wishon, meanwhile, got on the phone with the Orozco Forero family’s ICE agent and every lawyer she could. They were going to take them into detention at a facility 2,200 miles away in Texas, a facility that was to detain families. Wishon wanted to find a lawyer who could stop the deportation order, and she wanted to make sure the boys would be reunited with their parents if they took them to meet the ICE agent.

And that was especially important, not just because they were young children, but because Juan David is still sick.

For the past year, he’s been seeking treatment at Seattle Children’s Hospital for an illness that is turning his urine muddy. So far, doctors have determined he’s losing red blood cells and protein through his urine, indicating a possible kidney issue, but they haven’t yet zeroed in on what is causing the problem. They likely need a kidney biopsy to be sure.

“Given the complexity of his case, it is essential that Juan remain in the United States for continued testing and treatment,” his nephrologist Jordan Symons wrote in a March letter to ICE. “We kindly request that you consider this medical necessity in your review of his immigration status and grant him the ability to stay in the United States until his treatment and evaluation are completed.”

Juan David’s care team has been monitoring him closely to ensure his red blood cell and protein levels never drop too low. His condition could become serious quickly.

“You can die from that,” said Sarah Kasnick, a physician’s assistant who is familiar with his case. Kasnick is also a foster parent, and Orozco Forero provided care for her family.

When Gabriel Wishon arrived to pick up the boys, they were confused and disoriented. Where were their parents? Why was everyone crying? They didn’t want to go to Colombia, they told him on the drive. They wanted to stay in the United States.

Around 5:30 p.m. that evening, he met with the ICE agent, who had waited past her work hours for them to arrive.

“Bye boys, you are going to see your parents right now. They are right inside,” Wishon told them. He watched them walk in carrying two stuffed animals, a Super Mario doll and Chase, the popular cartoon dog dressed as a police officer.

The families Orozco Forero cares for are now in a free fall.

Jessica Cocson, whose son has been in Orozco Forero’s care for more than a year, described her in a character letter to ICE as a “blessing to us in ways I struggle to fully express.”

Orozco Forero and her husband “support working families, provide quality childcare, and demonstrate compassion and commitment every day,” Cocson wrote. “It is heartbreaking to think that someone who gives so much and asks so little could be forced to leave.”

Tamia Riley, whose two sons with autism were also in Orozco Forero’s care, said losing her was like watching “a father walking out the door.”

“These people, these day care providers, sitters, they are a form of family members for me and my children,” Riley said.

Now, the day care she was set to open lays empty. Inside, the walls are plastered with posters listing colors and sight words. There are cushioned mats on the floor and play stations. Tables with tiny chairs. A tall pink dollhouse. High chairs and a pack and play for the babies. Outside, two play houses, a ball pit, toys to ride on and little picnic tables set across an artificial turf. But no children to enjoy any of it.

Big Dreams Day Care she was going to call it, for the dreams she wanted the kids in her care to strive for, and the ones that were finally coming to fruition for her.

Orozco Forero’s detention has rattled child care workers across the country. In Texas, workers represented by the Service Employees International Union have been rallying in her name. U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Texas Democrat, of the family’s release at a rally on June 29 in San Antonio. And a group of union workers is attempting to deliver supplies to the family. ����’s an effort Orozco Forero knows little about; she only has limited communication with those on the outside.

Tricia Schroeder, the president of the Seattle-based SEIU chapter that represents care workers, said that, for years unions like hers have been working to improve quality, access and affordability in child care, a system in such deep crisis it’s been called by the Treasury Department

Immigrant women like Orozco Forero were part of that effort to improve access, doing jobs few Americans want to take on.

“Detaining child care providers, especially those who care for kids with special needs, just deepens the crisis in early learning,” Schroeder said.

Orozco Forero was also the connective tissue that kept families employed. Her loss has rippled across industries.

Kasnick, the foster parent, said one of the children in her care had been tentatively set to start at Orozco Forero’s day care as soon as it opened. Orozco Forero had been the only provider who would take the child, who has autism and is nonverbal.

Orozco Forero had cared for the girl at Wishon’s day care as if she was her own, even taking her in once when the child’s care had fallen through and no foster family in the entire county would take her in because of the complexity of her needs. The girl arrived at Orozco Forero’s house at midnight on a weekend “with no clothing, toys, medication or any of her belongings … this did not [deter] Nicolle and Sebastian instead they immediately went and purchased all the things” the child needed, a social worker wrote in a letter to ICE. Kasnick said Orozco Forero was even considering becoming a foster parent.

Without her, Kasnick is out of options: She quit her job as a physician’s assistant to care for the child after Orozco Forero was detained.

“There are now 44 patients a day who don’t have anyone to provide their health care, and I can’t go to work because Nicolle’s day care didn’t open,” Kasnick said.

In the weeks since, Kasnick has had an overwhelming feeling of helplessness, she said. How could this happen to someone who gave back so much?

“The security of knowing that you can be in your home one day and in a prison the next week, and you didn’t do anything except exist?” she said. “It makes you feel like there’s no good left in the world.”

Orozco Forero’s family has now been in ICE detention for nearly a month awaiting a bond hearing that could buy them time in the United States. Orozco Forero and the boys are together; her husband is in the same facility but separated from them.

Juan David hasn’t been eating. It took three weeks for him to receive medical care, Orozco Forero told her attorney, James Costo.

Costo has been working to get the details of why ICE allowed the family to stay in the country with monitoring after they lost their asylum case last year. There has been an order for their deportation since then, but ICE never attempted to deport them until the Trump administration ramped up efforts. The number of immigrants without criminal convictions who have been detained has since May.

The process to fight an asylum claim and appeal a denial is complicated — there are court deadlines, documents that need to be submitted and translated.

“They think maybe they can do it themselves and go in and say what happened but they are not understanding the whole legal process,” Costo said. “The system isn’t made for things to be easy.”

Costo is hopeful a judge will allow them to stay in the country temporarily as Juan David seeks care. They have almost no family left in Colombia, and no way to obtain care for him there, their family said. If they can stay, then perhaps Orozco Forero could try to obtain a work visa as a domestic worker.

He has gathered letters of support from numerous people whose lives the Orozco Forero family touched, and Wishon set up a to cover her legal expenses.

In the letters, Juan David’s first grade teachers call him an exceptional student who went from one of the lowest reading levels in the class — 10 words a minute — to one of the highest at 70 words a minute.

“He shows the qualities of a model citizen at a young age — dependable, ethical, and hard-working,” wrote his teacher, Carla Trujillo.

They were all on their way to shaping a better future, Wishon wrote in hers. The couple “worked tirelessly to build a better life for their children and to open their own licensed child care business. In all my years of employing and mentoring caregivers, I have rarely met a couple as responsible, driven, and capable as Nicolle and Sebastian.”

“This family is not a threat,” she concluded. “They are an asset.”

“ board votes to close 13 school buildings.”

“ to close 7 schools, cut grades at 3 others despite heavy resistance.”

“: These are the SFUSD schools facing closure.” 

Such reports can leave the impression that districts are rapidly closing schools in response to declining enrollment and families leaving for charters, private schools and homeschooling. 

But the data tells a different story. 

School closures have actually declined over the past decade, a period of financial instability that only increased in the aftermath of the pandemic, according to research from the Brookings Institution. 

The , shared exclusively with ����Ӱ��, shows that in 2014-15, the closure rate — the share of schools nationwide that were open one year and closed the next — was 1.3%. In 2023-24, the rate was just .8%, up from .7% the year before.

“I think it’s important for people to realize how rare school closures are,” said Sofoklis Goulas, a Brookings fellow and the study’s author. 

Last fall, showed how schools that have lost at least 20% of their enrollment since the pandemic are more likely to be low-performing. The Clark County Public Schools, which includes Las Vegas, had the most schools on the list — 19 — but isn’t currently considering closures. In Philadelphia, with 12 schools in that category, district leaders are to discuss closures.

When it released Goulas’s initial report, of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute argued that low-performing schools should be the first to close. But efforts to do so are often met with pushback from families, teachers and advocacy groups who argue that shutting down schools unfairly harms poor and minority students and contributes to neighborhood blight. Their pleas often push district leaders to retreat. Working in advocates’ favor, experts say, is the fact that many big district leaders are untested and have never had to navigate the emotionally charged waters of closing schools.

“Closing a neighborhood school is probably one of the most difficult decisions a district’s board makes,” said Michael Fine, CEO of the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, a California state agency that provides financial oversight to districts. “They are going to avoid that decision as long as they can and at all costs.” 

Such examples aren’t hard to find:

• Just weeks after announcing closures, the San Francisco district to shutter any schools this fall.

• In September, outgoing Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez pledged to for another two years, even though state law allows the city to take action sooner. The district is in the process of absorbing to keep them from closing. 

• In October, Pittsburgh Public Schools ; several others were set to be relocated and reconfigured. About a month later, Superintendent Wayne Walters hit pause, saying the district needed more “thoughtful planning” and community input.

• Last May, the Seattle Public Schools it would shutter 20 elementary schools next school year in response to a $100 million-plus budget deficit. They later increased the number to 21. By October, the list had dwindled to four schools. Just before Thanksgiving, Superintendent Brent Jones entirely. 

“This decision allows us to clarify the process, deepen our understanding of the potential impacts, and thoughtfully determine our next steps,” to families. While the plan would have saved the district $5.5 million, he said, “These savings should not come at the cost of dividing our community.”

Graham Hill Elementary in Seattle, which fifth grader Wren Alexander has attended since kindergarten, was initially on the list. The Title I school sits on top of a hill in a desirable area overlooking Lake Washington. But it also draws students from the lower-income, highly diverse Brighton Park neighborhood.

Among Wren’s neighbors are students from Ethiopia, Vietnam and Guatemala. Wren, who moves on to middle school this fall, said she looks forward to visiting her former teachers and cried when she heard Graham Hill might close. She wanted her younger brother and sister to develop the same warm connection she had.

“I don’t think I would be who I am if I didn’t go to the school,” she said.

Tricia Alexander, her mother, was among those who opposed the closures, participating in outside the district’s administration building and before board meetings.

“We were really loud,” said Alexander, who’s also part of , an effort to advocate for more state education funding. She said there was “no real evidence” that closing schools would have solved the district’s budget woes. “In no way would kids win.”

����’s shared by many school finance experts, who note that the bulk of school funding is tied up in salaries, not facility costs. Districts may save some money from closing schools, but unless coupled with staff reductions, it’s often not enough to make up for large budget shortfalls.  

‘So bad at this’

If enrollment doesn’t pick up, experts say, leaders who delay closures will have to confront the same issues a year later or — perhaps even more likely — pass the problems on to their successors. 

“If there continues to be fewer and fewer children …then that doesn’t get better,” said Brian Eschbacher, an enrollment consultant.  

One Chicago high school, for example, had just last year. In Los Angeles, the nation’s second-largest district, 34 elementary schools have fewer than 200 students and 29 of those are using less than half of the building, according to a recent . The share of U.S. students being educated outside of traditional schools also continues to increase, according to a forthcoming analysis Goulas conducted with researchers at Yale University. 

“We don’t see a trajectory of enrollment recovery,” he said. “Things actually got worse in the most recently released data batch.”

But such conditions haven’t stopped advocacy groups from campaigning against closures. One of them, the left-leaning Advancement Project, has joined with local groups in Denver and Pittsburgh to make a case against closures nationally. 

“All children deserve to have a local, neighborhood public school in which they and their families have a say,” said Jessica Alcantara, senior attorney for the group’s Opportunity to Learn program. “����’s not just that school closures are hard on families. They harm the full education ecosystem that makes up a school — students, families, school staff and whole communities.”   

Last May, Alcantara and other Advancement Project staff urged the U.S. Department of Education to treat school closures as a civil rights issue. Nine of the 10 schools the Denver district in 2022 had a majority Black or Hispanic student population. 

The advocates argued that in cases of enrollment loss, run-down facilities and empty classrooms, there are alternatives to closing schools. They to push for renovations and urge district leaders to use vacant spaces for STEM, arts or other programs that might attract families. Opponents of closures also say that districts sometimes underestimate how much of a building is used for non-classroom purposes like special education services, early-childhood programs and mental health. 

Eschbacher’s assessment of why districts often back down from closing schools is more blunt. 

“Districts are so bad at this,” he said. “If you just do a few things wrong, it could sink the whole effort.”

For one, leaders often target schools with under 300 students for closure, appealing to parents that they can’t afford to staff them with arts programs, a school nurse or a librarian. 

But those explanations sometimes fall flat.

“Parents always say, ‘I wanted a small school. I know my teachers and they know my kid. And it’s right down the street,’” Eschbacher said. If they didn’t like their school, he added, they would have likely would have chosen a charter or some other option. 

District officials also run into trouble if they try to spin the data. When Seattle officials talked about “right-sizing” the district, to the loss of 4,900 students since 2019-20. 

But Albert Wong, a parent in the district and a lifelong Seattle resident, knew there was more to the story. Not only is the current enrollment higher than it was from 2000 to 2011, the pandemic-related decline seems to have . In a , he argued that officials presented misleading data “to make current enrollment look exceptionally bad.”

Graham Hill Elementary, fifth-grader Wren’s school, actually saw a slight increase in enrollment this year, including a new class for preschoolers with disabilities. And while Pittsburgh schools are another 5,000 students over the next six years, enrollment this year held steady at .

To Eschbacher, the “burden of proof is always on the district” to make an airtight case for why students would be better off in larger schools. He has applauded the Denver-area Jeffco Public Schools, which has schools since 2021, for having , not just district officials, explain population trends to families at community meetings.

‘It wasn’t realistic’

Walters, Pittsburgh’s superintendent, can easily rattle off reasons why the district should rethink how it uses its buildings. Early last year, showed that almost half of the district’s schools were less than 50% full. 

“We’ve lost about a fourth of our population, but we have not changed anything to our footprint,” he said. 

Meanwhile, the average age of the district’s buildings is 90 years old, and many lack , forcing some schools to send students home in sweltering weather.

But a consulting group’s showed that Black and low-income students and those with disabilities would be disproportionately affected by the changes. Several drew attention to those disparities, calling  the effort “rushed.” 

Walters agreed and put the plan on hold last fall, saying he lacked “robust” responses to parents’ tough questions about how schools would change for their kids.

“It doesn’t mean that we don’t see a path forward,” he said. “But it wasn’t realistic that we would have those questions answered within the timeline that we’ve been given.”

In March, parents pushed for , causing the school board to postpone a vote on the next phase in the closure process.

As the Jeffco district demonstrates, some school systems are following through with closures. The school board in nearby Denver unanimously voted in November to close seven schools and downsize three more. 

But that’s after community protests pushed the district to put on a plan to close 19 schools in 2021. Advocates argued that families in low-income areas, who had been heavily impacted by the pandemic, would be most affected. Then the district only in 2023, and now board members are considering on closures for three years.

School boards closing a dozen or more schools are often catching up with work their predecessors let pile up, said Goulas of Brookings. 

“Closing a single school allows for easier placement of students and minimizes the political cost and community stress,” he said. “When a district releases a long list of schools to close, it likely indicates that they waited for conditions to improve, but this didn’t happen.”

Angel Gober, executive director of 412 Justice — one of 16 organizations that called on the Pittsburgh district to drop its plan — acknowledged that their fight isn’t over.

“I think we got a temporary blessing from God,” she said. But she wants the district to explore a host of alternatives, like community schools and corporate support, before it shutters and sells off buildings. “We do have very old infrastructure, and that is an equity issue. But can we try five things before we make a drastic decision to close schools for forever?”

“I used to be pretty suicidal last summer and I tried to commit suicide about two times.”

Since 2018, more than 36,000 students across the Seattle region have shared their hopes, fears and family secrets in an online questionnaire called Check Yourself. 

“My dog has … untreatable cancer and my great grandma died a week ago.”

“Some time i harm my self by not eating cause i don’t really like my body.”

Questions peer into students’ sexual preferences and romantic lives — even which gender they’re “most likely to have a crush on.” ����’s the kind of information a 12-year-old might not tell their best friend.

“Do my parents see this survey?”

Districts promise students their answers to over 50 personal questions will be kept confidential. But a group of parents has been able to obtain reams of sensitive survey data from multiple districts through the state’s .

One of them, Stephanie Hager, is on a six-year crusade to expose what she considers to be the program’s lack of privacy safeguards. To prove her point, the former Microsoft program manager said she correctly identified six students based on nothing more than details they provided in the survey and a simple Google or social media search. 

“We know their school, gender, age on a certain date, grade level, language they speak, their dogs’ names, friends’ names, race, their unique interests, what sports they play, if they are religious, and anything else they feel like writing in — plus their whole mental health record,” said the Snoqualmie Valley mother of four, whose son took the survey in 2019.

 “I can’t imagine any parent saying OK to that.”

Researchers at Seattle Children’s Hospital and the University of Washington developed the Check Yourself program to better identify students in middle and high school silently suffering from depression, substance abuse or suicidal thoughts. 

Supported by a voter-approved encompasses Seattle, more than $21 million since 2018. The funds help pay for mental health counseling for students and to track trends across the 13 districts that participate. Seven schools in Spokane County, in eastern Washington, and a few districts in Oregon also use Check Yourself.

Backers of the survey have a simple defense: It saves lives.

Valerie Allen, director of social services and mental health in the Highline district, told ����Ӱ�� of a student who jumped into a pond at a city park in 2022 carrying a backpack laden with weights. The boy went missing after an argument with his dad. The family, Allen said, turned to a school counselor who had started meeting with the student after Check Yourself responses showed he was suicidal. The counselor tipped off police to the pond, the kid’s favorite spot, where they arrived just in time to save him.

The question of whether results like this justify the potential pitfalls have mired the program in controversy since its inception.

“The ultimate protection” against privacy risks is not to do the survey, said Evan Elkin, who helped adapt it for schools and serves as executive director of Reclaiming Futures, a project at Portland State University. But, he asks, is ending the program “worth the lives that you lose?” Officials said they could not determine the number of suicides prevented due to the survey.

For Hapsa Ali, a 2023 Highline district graduate, Check Yourself came at the right time. She suffered from “really bad social anxiety” and wasn’t getting along with her mom. Based on her answers, the school connected her to a counselor who regularly checked in on her, texting once a week.

“She was my safe space,” Ali said.

The clash over Check Yourself falls at the intersection of social forces that have only intensified since the pandemic. are experiencing extreme emotional and psychological stress. While show some improvement since 2021, 30% of 10th graders still say they have persistent feelings of depression and 15% reported thoughts of suicide, according to . 

At the same time, school districts house massive amounts of sensitive personal data and rely heavily on ed tech, making them prime targets for hackers. The Highline district, for example, closed for three days in September because of a . Nationally, more than doubled in 2023. Online mental health surveys also face backlash from activists and , who find them frequently intrusive, inappropriate and removed from school’s main purpose. 

“Schools are really under a huge amount of pressure to address student mental health,” said Isabelle Barbour, a consultant who developed a school-based mental health program for the state of Oregon. “But when they try to adopt something that can work in their setting, it brings up all of these other pressure points around privacy.”

‘I shouldn’t be seeing this’

The survey, which takes about 12 minutes to complete, leads students through a series of prompts, from simple tasks such as listing their top goals for the year to deeply personal queries like, “During the past year, did you ever seriously think about ending your life?”

Parents get two chances to opt their children out of the screener, and students can also decline to complete it on the day of the survey. But districts reveal nothing that would alert anyone to its potential risks. Quite the contrary. promotes it as a “successful, proactive approach to providing support to students.” “personalized feedback and strategies for staying healthy.”

In fact, assure parents that only counselors or other “relevant” staff can view individual students’ responses, which are stored on a “secure” platform by Tickit Health, a Canadian company. To participate in the county-led program, districts must sign an agreement saying they will remove all “potentially identifying” student data before submitting records to the county, which uses the information to evaluate the program’s effectiveness and respond to students’ needs. Districts promise that county officials and researchers only see.

But an investigation by county ombudsman Jon Stier, triggered by parents’ concerns, suggests this hasn’t always been the case. A report released last summer revealed that in the program’s early years, county officials were able to connect student names to their responses, although Stier said that practice has ended.

The issue of the survey’s confidentiality first emerged publicly in 2022, when 10 districts released spreadsheets of student answers in response to a public records request from a . Snoqualmie Valley parents asked districts for additional information, released as recently as February 2024, which they shared exclusively with ����Ӱ��. 

A handful of districts concealed some personal details. But several redacted little, if anything.

This could put districts in violation of federal , which require districts to gain parental consent or remove all identifying information from records before releasing them publicly. 

Privacy experts say that wiping information such as race, home language and favorite activities from a document in order to make it is no easy task. But without such measures, a combination of answers could identify a student, in the language of the law, “with reasonable certainty.”

Sometimes, just a simple data point can expose a student’s identity.

During the 2021-22 school year, for example, only one student in the Kent district who took the survey identified as being part of the Muckleshoot tribe, which has about statewide.

Most survey questions are multiple choice. But 13 allow students to write open-ended responses — and it is these answers that experts say vastly increase the chances of identifying potential students. 

At ����Ӱ��’s request, Amelia Vance, president of the Public Interest Privacy Center, reviewed an Excel document with answers from more than 900 students in the Auburn district from the 2021-22 school year — details that included random factoids like a preference for techno music and proficiency in math, as well as very private revelations such as conflicts at home and incidents of self-harm. 

“I shouldn’t be seeing this spreadsheet,” Vance said. “It feels like everybody’s sticking their head in the sand about what the consequences could be.” 

Districts ‘caught off guard’

Marc Seligson, a King County spokesman, insisted that “student data security is paramount,” but that responsibility for interpreting privacy laws falls to the districts.

“We can’t give them legal advice. Each district has their own lawyer,” said Margaret Soukup, the county’s youth, family and prevention manager, who oversees the program.

She said she was shocked districts released records to parents. “I was very upset because I didn’t even think that that was a possibility.”

����Ӱ�� reached out to the nine King County districts that released records to the public and still use Check Yourself.

Five didn’t respond, and a spokeswoman for Auburn declined to comment. Conor Laffey, a spokesman for the Snoqualmie Valley district, said officials there worked with the county to “safeguard confidential student information” and consulted the district’s legal counsel before releasing spreadsheets. He declined to elaborate.

Tahoma School District Superintendent Ginger Callison, a former Snoqualmie Valley official, said she didn’t remember details about past disclosures and is “confident” that in the future, “nothing will get released that isn’t allowed or required.”

A Seattle spokeswoman noted that records went through “multiple layers of review to remove potentially identifiable comments within student responses.” But the district didn’t redact very specific details about some students, like the one obsessed with reptiles who wanted a pet frog and another who speaks English, Russian, Spanish and sometimes Samoan. The district did not comment on why it included such information in the spreadsheet of students’ answers.

����Ӱ�� also contacted , a University of Washington researcher who helped develop the survey and now evaluates the King County program. She said districts are obligated to protect “the confidentiality of student information,” but directed further questions to the county.

Parents say the county also bears responsibility for students potentially being exposed. 

Hager, Check Yourself’s most outspoken parent critic, obtained an email thread through an open records request that shows officials were well aware of the survey’s potential privacy pitfalls. In one email, a former Tickit Health executive warns county officials that if a student “were to enter identifiable information in the free-text sections, theoretically this would be accessible.”

One wrinkle in King County’s privacy dispute is that Washington has one of the strongest. In 2016, for example, the state Supreme Court upheld over half a million dollars in in a case against a state agency that was slow to turn over records. 

Elkin, from Portland State University, said districts were “caught off guard and panicked” when they received the open records requests. 

But the Washington districts are no different than many others nationally that currently find themselves fielding more public record requests than ever before — often from watchdogs like Hager or activists investigating curriculum materials they believe to be inappropriate. Spurred on by conservative groups like Parents Defending Education and Moms for Liberty, repeat filers dig for lesson plans, teacher training materials and financial records — particularly those relating to transgender issues and diversity, equity and inclusion.

Allen Miedema, executive director of the Northshore district’s technology department, said the districts that use Check Yourself could “do a better job of letting parents know” about the purpose of the survey.

If staff members failed to conceal student identities, he said, it’s often because they’re “swamped” with requests for documents and lack clear guidance from state or county officials on what’s allowed to be included.   

‘Survey gets dark very fast’

School leaders insist the danger is largely hypothetical.

Officials in King County, and from six districts that responded to a request from ����Ӱ��, said they’ve received no reports of cyberthieves or child predators gaining access to Check Yourself and using results to target students.

They point to internal  showing that students feel more connected to school when they’re referred to an “intervention” after taking the survey. In focus groups, students expressed “favorable opinions” about the screener. In  of almost 400 students referred to a staff member after completing Check Yourself, the percentage saying that an adult at school listens, cares and tells them they do a good job increased. 

“The tool has been indispensable in pinpointing students who would benefit from urgent extra help — some of whom we never would have known were struggling,” said Laffey, the Snoqualmie Valley district spokesman.

But that doesn’t satisfy Hager.

She is among more than 20 Snoqualmie Valley parents who started asking questions about the program after the warned in 2018 that “malicious use” of sensitive student data could lead to identity theft and “help child predators identify new targets.”

Hager, who attended school in King County, doesn’t have to imagine what it’s like to be preyed on by a trusted adult. In seventh grade, she said she was a victim of sexual misconduct involving a male teacher. 

“I know the FBI’s scenarios are real,” she said.

She points to students’ written reflections on the survey as proof that some find the questions disturbing.

“This survey gets dark very fast especially for a child.”

“Why does it act like I’m constantly breaking the law? I’m 12.” 

Many students expressed particular concern about questions related to sex and gender. One 12-year-old wrote:

“Female but kinda non binary sorta questioning but not? (Don’t tell my parents).”

Seligson, the King County spokesman, said the survey asks such questions because LGBTQ kids “are one of our most vulnerable populations.” State data released in 2023 showed that were nearly twice as likely as other students to report “depressive feelings.” 

The unease some students expressed about Check Yourself was echoed by several district staffers.

In 2019, an official in the Tukwila district, south of Seattle, wrote in that the survey was “causing considerable angst” and that with many “vulnerable” and “traditionally marginalized” families, educators didn’t want to “create unnecessary harm.”

That same year, a Seattle school counselor called it a “super personal survey,” according to an email ����Ӱ�� obtained through a public records request. She questioned why the district needed the information and whether it would be able to keep it confidential.

‘Absolute data privacy is a fantasy’

To be sure, not all King County parents have a problem with Check Yourself.

Erica Thomson, who works for a cloud communications company, said the notion of “absolute data privacy is a fantasy.”

She has two boys in the Seattle schools, one who is transgender and the other who has ADHD, and appreciates that the program gets her children to open up.

“Kids do not tell parents everything,” Thomson said. “Sometimes it is because they love their parents too much and do not want them to worry or suffer.”

Some students write that they appreciate the survey experience, which includes targeted recommendations based on their answers. A student who reports using marijuana, for example, will get facts about how it negatively affects memory and mental and physical health.

Ali, the former student who found Check Yourself beneficial to her well-being, had a distinctly nuanced take on her experience.

While praising the personal attention she received from a counselor,  Ali described a “rowdy” atmosphere in the sixth-period history classroom where she took the survey, with classmates buried in their phones and chatting with friends. It made it difficult to express some of the conflicts she was experiencing at the time. 

“It was a bunch of juniors just goofing off. I was sitting next to my friend, and she would just ask me, ‘Oh, what did you answer?’” she said. The atmosphere, she added, “felt like it wasn’t as serious as it should have been.”

The information is ‘too valuable’

As King County parents and school officials debate the merits and risks of Check Yourself, other districts have managed to use the program with relative ease.

In Oregon’s Hillsboro district, students’ responses stay on the Tickit platform — unavailable to outside evaluators or the public at large.

Spokane County officials not only eliminated questions about sexual orientation and romantic attractions, but also removed open-response fields.

“Why is it necessary for us to have that information?” asked Justin Johnson, who leads community services for Spokane. Additionally, clinicians monitor the administration of the survey in classrooms, allowing the results to be covered by . 

But Soukup, the King County official who oversees the program, said districts there find the write-in answers “too valuable” to do without because students often use them to open up about their problems.

For some King County districts, however, Check Yourself simply proved to be too much.

The Lake Washington district pulled out of the program three years ago and instead contracts with full-time mental health specialists to respond to students’ needs.

The intensely personal questions — and the resulting risk of privacy violations — also helped push the Bellevue school system to drop it in 2019. 

Officials opted for , and because of their sensitive nature, results are “considered some of the most privileged data the district has,” said Naomi Calvo, who served as Bellevue’s director of research, evaluation and assessment until 2023. “I didn’t even have access to it.”

Calvo understands why districts jumped to implement Check Yourself and most continue to use it. “Students have needs that were going unaddressed and there is a dearth of options available,” she said. 

But as a mental health professional with a young son at the time, she felt skeptical. 

“As a researcher, I believe in surveys,” she said. “But I would not have let my child take that survey.”

This story was co-published with .

If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Additional resources are available at . For LGBTQ mental health support, you can contact The Trevor Project’s toll-free support line at 866-488-7386.

Free, confidential treatment referral and information is available in English and Spanish at 800-662-4357, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s National Helpline.

Financial dysfunction is plaguing many city school districts.

is the most concerning. The district’s current $300 million budget gap is set to triple next year, which isn’t surprising since enrollment dropped 10% over six years as the district added staff. Now, it won’t close schools, won’t reduce the workforce and is being told by the mayor to give in to union demands for big raises. How would the math work? The mayor wants the district to take out a short-term, high-interest loan. Oh, and the city and district still need to work out how to .

is a close second. Two years ago, leaders agreed to a costly labor agreement that they admitted would require major cuts. But then they didn’t make those cuts. Instead, leaders exhausted all reserves and are borrowing money they’ll have to pay back by 2026. What’s the plan for the $100 million budget deficit? None yet. 

Why are financial crises suddenly common among large urban districts? Federal relief funds are part of the issue. Despite warnings that the money was temporary, many city districts used those one-time funds for salary raises and new staff hires.  

Some never had a plan for what would happen next. For example, when the federal relief funds ended, leaders in seemed surprised by a glaring $143 million hole in their budget forecast.

Of course, it’s never easy to cut labor. But avoidance makes it worse over time. In a recent hostage-like negotiation, the superintendent demanded $10 million from the city within 24 hours or the district would start issuing pink slips.

Falling birth rates are another factor. Over the long term, fewer kids means fewer dollars and a need for fewer schools. Closing schools is tough work, and many city districts especially aren’t up for it. In , schools are down to capacity. After pressing pause on its school closures, now has until Dec. 15 to come up with an alternative or face a potential .

Sometimes it’s basic financial mismanagement. For months, , inadvertently overpaid its staff, which, not surprisingly, has created a drain on the budget.

got behind on filing its financial reports and ended up with a state-imposed “corrective action plan” that involved repayment of $43 million. After the state imposed an external financial audit, the district has since .

In , where Las Vegas is located, “miscalculations” keep shifting the budget gap by tens of millions. And because New Orleans dragged its feet on surfacing a $20 million miscalculation of local tax revenue, each of its schools must cut some six or more staff midyear.

In St. Louis, the issue appears to be an unwarranted spending spree by a newly hired — and now fired — superintendent.

All these financial messes are leaving kids in the lurch. The dysfunction destabilizes the district, often leaving little time to make consequential decisions like staffing cuts or school closures. Employees are demoralized. Trust in the system erodes. Families with means pursue other options. Most of all, the financial upheaval takes all eyes off the district’s primary responsibility: student learning.

What is it about city school systems that predisposes them to such financial dysfunction? One obvious factor is that leaders are underprepared to manage complex financial operations that can involve upward of a billion dollars — or more — in public funds. Coming off a that outpaced inflation, few of today’s leaders have any experience with making hard budget tradeoffs. As forecasts change, leaders ignore the signs, stall or, in the case of , pass off major budget-cutting to a task force of 40 volunteers.  

Another reality is the intense, unbalanced political dynamics common in today’s urban centers. Powerful labor groups make unaffordable demands. Vocal parents resist program reductions or school closures. Some elected board members reverse planned cuts, imagining they’re defending constituents from the heartless bean counters in the district’s finance office. The good finance leaders flee the turmoil. Eventually, the district runs out of beans.

Strong district leadership should be an antidote. Leaders need to be , sharing options and explaining financial tradeoffs. They need to make hard choices, laser-focused on what’s best for students. They need to safeguard their schools’ financial integrity, ensuring that today’s decisions don’t erode the education of tomorrow’s students.

Missing in action are states. Typically, legislatures throw up their hands and bemoan local control. Many are wary of state takeover policies in part because of their of impacts on students.

But there are . Requiring multi-year budget forecasts and minimum levels of fiscal reserves are a start. States can then adopt policies that get triggered when districts overspend and deplete those reserves, each with the goal of helping the district get back on track. With some 80% to 90% of expenses going to personnel, states could mandate that labor contracts be reopened for renegotiation. They could appoint a financial auditor to communicate honestly about district finances. Also triggered could be a requirement that the board and leaders undergo finance training and hold more frequent meetings until budget gaps are addressed.

Standing by while finances erode further in these urban districts is unfair to the many students who depend on their leaders to manage the billions being deployed for their education. Continuing to look the other way will make things worse. City kids need the adults to figure this out.

Chris Riback: Kimberly, thank you for coming by the studio.

Kimberly Early: Thank you for inviting me.

Chris Riback: So tell me about BCDI-Seattle. What’s the community like?

Kimberly Early: So, BCDI-Seattle, we are an advocacy organization. We were founded in 1973 and our founder, she’s passed away, but her name is Bunny Wilburn. We advocate for public policy. We advocate for best practice. We advocate for change. And how does it impact African-American children and families? We want it to be in a positive way. We have a couple different fields that we’ve worked in. One being education, of course.

Chris Riback: Of course.

Kimberly Early: And one of the things that we’ve done in the past, we used to have an African-American hotline, parent hotline. So there’s so many children that are suspended or expelled from school, oftentimes Black children and you don’t know how to-

Chris Riback: Boys in particular.

Kimberly Early: We would have somebody who’s a trained advocate and help them. They would go to the meetings and help them go through the system.

Chris Riback: What a great resource that is, because I will say that concern, the suspension issue, which we’ve all read about, we’ve seen the data is such a challenge. And for each parent, there’s the emotional component. It’s totally new. They don’t know the system, the administrators know the system.

Kimberly Early: Yes.

Chris Riback: What a great resource that is to offer someone to help guide the parents through that system and advocate.

Kimberly Early: Yes, that was huge, because you don’t know. And then they’re a small printing and you’re like, “What am I supposed to do? Where am I supposed to be at?” So that was one of the programs we had with education. Another program we had is juvenile justice. And at Greenhill School it’s a juvenile rehabilitation center. We help folks who maybe they want to go back to school and pay for their college education. Another one was childcare, of course, because a lot of our members are in childcare and or education.

So we have a yearly conference that focuses on best practices. And we always have somebody who is African American or of African descent leading a workshop because oftentimes people will go, “Oh, I couldn’t find anybody. I didn’t know anybody.” So we don’t have that problem. And another one was child welfare. And one of the things that we’ve done in the past is have Black foster parents come together and we want to have this go through the legislature. So here’s some information we want to get done. So that’s some of the programs we’ve had. And I just want to say our tagline is like, “Who, if not us, and to take care of our children.”

Chris Riback: It sounds like not only a really robust platform, but really actionable and practical. It sounds like you’re combining the ideas and the education and the empowerment that comes with education, but with practical ability to attack the problems. Is that part of… Am I understanding it correctly?

Kimberly Early: Yes, because you want to make it simple. What can I do as a parent to push against this, push against the system and make it easy.

Chris Riback: To help my kids.

Kimberly Early: To help my kids and not make it easy. That’s something I can do, not something somebody else has to do. Because you want the parents or the community to advocate for themselves. Not, “Oh, somebody is going to save you,” you save yourself. And we’re there along the way to help you with that.

Chris Riback: Do you think that some of that has to do… Some of the advancement that it sounds like BCDI-Seattle has made and the practical tactical help that you give the parents? 1973 is a long time. I mean, you guys were at the forefront and Bunny was really something I bet of an innovator.

Kimberly Early: Yes, she was something else and was like, “This is what we are going to do for our community. And if it’s who not us, we need to be responsible for ourselves and our children.”

Chris Riback: So what’s next? What’s next for Seattle?

Kimberly Early: So one of the things that we’re working on now is working with our childcare providers of African descent. And I’ll give you a little history with that too.

Chris Riback: Please. I would expect so.

Kimberly Early: In 2018, National Black Child Development got in touch with us and they said, “We want to do a State of the Black Child Report Card.” And they were trying to do it in each state. And so in order to make that happen, they were like, “We’re going to come out there, we’re going to help with this, and we’re going to talk to politicians, we’re going to talk to community members, we’re going to talk to organizations and agencies,” and be like, “What are some issues you see? What are the issues as far as what Black children are concerned that you see that are impacting them in negative ways?”

So that was about 2018 through 2019. And then in November 2019, we released a State of the Black Child Report Card. So when we released that, it was at Miller Community Center and they said there’s these five different areas that are impacting children’s health, wellbeing, social welfare, and I’m going to read it from here real quick because I don’t remember all five.

Chris Riback: Go ahead.

Kimberly Early: And they were like… They highlighted racial disparities. So increased access to early childhood education for Black children. Number two, increase financial support for early childhood education programs. Three, ensure teacher diversity reflects the diversity of young children. Four, support positive discipline, practice in harsh discipline for Black children. And five, eliminate the racial achievement gap by equipping educators to respond to the needs of Black children.

So this day that we did the report card, we released it. We said, let’s look at these five things and let’s break it down even more. Like what would we do to increase access for early childhood education for Black children? What would that look like? So people got in groups and they talked about it some more, what can we do? What are some things we need to focus on? And so we took this information, we call it the purple wall, because it’s all this information on the wall and put that together.

And they said, “Let’s have a State of the Black Child Report Card task force to work on some things.” And one of the main things that came out, there were a couple different things, but they were like, “We want to take one of these or more than one and move forward in the community and work on it.” So that one was called educating decision makers in order to create a strong constituency. So what happened? And that was 2020 when Covid started. So they had to switch like everybody else, what we’re doing and how we’re going about it?

So for a year they met and they were like, “What we’re going to do is we’re going to send a survey to Black childcare providers to ask them, how is this impacting you as far as race is concerned, COVID is concerned, what are some issues that are coming up for you?” And we also gave the results of this survey to them as well. And there were three things that came out of this. One was what they wanted to do as a provider is they were saying, “We want to have open, transparent, and accountable work and needed to reverse institutional racism.” The other one is champion better in dynamic benefits for childcare providers. And the last one, the third one was stop the information overload.

Chris Riback: So that’s the childcare side. I want to hear quickly about what you’re doing on literacy.

Kimberly Early: So on literacy, we have Read to Succeed, and that’s another program from National Black Child Development Institute. And with that one, it’s about having children have cultural relevant books, being able to build their own libraries. And I’ll, oftentimes the children’s books can be pricey, like 20, $25. And we want children to see themselves reflected in ways that maybe they don’t see themselves at school.

One of the things we’re doing is adopting different childcare centers and family homes in Seattle and dropping off books like once a month, which we’re going to start next month. And also going to be doing some parent workshops and how do you make stories come to life? Another thing that BCDI Charlotte has, they have something about how do you see where your child is in reading? So we want to work with that program and adopt that one as well to bring that into life.

Chris Riback: The power of a conference like this, you get to learn from others and I’m sure plenty of people are learning from BCDI-Seattle. Kimberly, thank you so much for joining the studio. Thank

Kimberly Early: You so much. Appreciate your time.

By searching for district communications and media coverage in each state from fall 2022 through summer 2023, CRPE identified districts publicly responding to AI last school year. We conducted more thorough research on these districts and .

Most of the reactions have revolved around ChatGPT, the large language learning model-based chatbot . 

Many large districts were initially wary of the new technology, with , and issuing , largely because of concerns over cheating. 

But many are adapting. New York City Public Schools , with Chancellor David Banks acknowledging a and a determination to “embrace its potential.” 

in Washington State reported that while it blocked ChatGPT to “get out ahead of it,” the district doesn’t plan to stop it long-term. In April, the district established a committee of teachers learning how to use ChatGPT to work on related policies.

In California’s , Superintendent Don Austin embraced ChatGPT’s potential to enhance learning and improve efficiency. Likening AI pushback to early resistance to calculators and the internet, the superintendent this spring to start using the technology. 

Supporting learning and emotional well-being

While most districts CRPE reviewed have not released precise plans for using AI, some are exploring opportunities. 

The introduced a tool called that functions like a literacy tutor that listens to students read and corrects mistakes in real time. The district piloted the tool at four schools last spring and had a small group of teachers experimenting with a tool to help create unit and lesson plans.

is piloting , an AI-powered “tutorbot” created by Khan Academy to give students individualized support across core subjects. The program , offering personalized prompts, diagnosing errors and helping students develop deeper reasoning skills, and gives teachers .

in Arizona and in Texas are piloting AI-enabled “early warning” programs that track student performance and send alerts if kids are off track. Mesa’s program collects academic, social and emotional data from teachers and students to predict up to three months in advance whether a student will pass or fail coursework. 

Creating new AI courses and standards

Other districts are designing curriculum to build students’ AI literacy. Most are in states creating conditions to help steward the advancement of AI curriculum. 

Baltimore County Public Schools an AI program at three high schools this year that will feature . The program is a byproduct of a 2020 state innovation grant, which funded district staff to develop curriculum and lead an advisory council.

In Georgia, the district is opening up a K-12, AI-themed that will provide progressively more sophisticated study of AI . This will in core subjects, and Gwinnett hopes that piloted lessons will spread across the entire district. The Georgia Department of Education worked with Gwinnett to write new academic standards so all schools in the state can launch their own AI courses.

A dozen districts in Florida, including those in the , are rolling out AI and data science programs this year in partnership with the , part of the university’s broader goal to infuse AI into K-12 curriculum across the state. The state is also providing funding to train teachers. 

Supporting teacher development

A small number of districts reviewed are using AI to strengthen teacher practice or generally orient educators to the technology as a teaching tool. 

This year, Spokane Public Schools in Washington, St. Vrain Valley School District in Colorado and Keller Independent School District in Texas an instructional coaching platform called that films classroom instruction and uses AI to offer teachers feedback and in developing an “action plan” to implement suggestions.

in Maryland launched training sessions this summer to help teachers learn how to incorporate AI into their lessons as part of a three-year agreement with nonprofit training partner aiEDU, which provides curricula and learning resources. 

Improving communications and operational efficiency

Districts are using AI to provide individualized guidance to students and parents. In April, the announced a chatbot to answer parents’ and guardians’ questions online and track whether issues were resolved. In August, unveiled a chatbot “student adviser” that provides parents real-time access to grades, test results, and attendance and assists its “” program. is one of many Arizona districts using , a chatbot digital assistant that helps students navigate the federal student financial aid — FAFSA — application. 

Districts are also using AI-powered technology to support safety and operational efficiency. in Florida uses AI to . uses AI-powered, self-driving floor cleaners, and in North Carolina uses AI to detect student illnesses as part of their pandemic response. 

Districts face essential questions about AI in 2023-24

A year ago, few districts or stakeholders were paying much attention to AI. Now, it’s clear that this technology will evolve faster than districts can develop formal training and guidance for staff. Leaders need to respond by thinking through how they train their workforce to responsibly use AI, and prepare for fundamental shifts in teachers’ roles and students’ opportunities in the coming years.

We suggest that districts:

• engage early adopter educators to discuss strategies and guidelines;
  
• communicate regularly and transparently with parents;
  
• train teachers on responsibly using AI; and
  
• partner with organizations, industry and higher education institutions who have AI expertise and can weigh in on best practices. 

We also urge state departments of education and regional associations to provide guidance and tools to help districts navigate AI. Students, parents, teachers and employers are looking to districts to do this well and to provide a learning environment that is both safe and reflective of the 21st century and beyond.

“This was an incredible effort by the … bargaining teams. We want to thank everyone on both teams who worked hard to come to a resolution,” .

“Our solidarity on the picket lines and the enormous community support we received made all the difference,” .

If comments on the are any indication, members are upset that they were asked to vote to suspend the strike without seeing the full tentative agreement. The Seattle union used the same process , and there were similar complaints.

The vote results highlighted member frustration. After hours of debate, only 57% voted to suspend the walkout and return to work. But that was enough. Schools reopened Sept. 14.

Union members may be upset about a lack of transparency, but the citizens of Seattle, who have to pay for whatever provisions have been negotiated, have yet to hear a single word about the contract’s contents. Such secrecy after an agreement is reached is unwarranted.

The union deemphasized its salary demands in public statements, saying it wanted “.” It claimed the sticking points concerned inadequate staffing for the English learners and special education students the district seeks to place in mainstream classrooms.

Seattle Public Schools spends nearly it receives on employee wages and benefits. Pay ranges from a minimum of $63,180 to a maximum of $123,506. The average salary for a Seattle public school teacher was reportedly .

The legislature allocated a 5.5% inflation pay hike for K-12 employees statewide, and the district offered an additional 1% on top of that.

That all sounds pretty respectful, but teachers in nearby Kent just settled their eight-day strike with an 8% raise, so I suspect that’s what the Seattle union aimed for.

As for staffing, of Seattle’s enrollment and staffing since 2013-14:

There are roughly the same number of human beings roaming the halls of Seattle’s schools today as there were in 2013-14. The difference is there are 1,725 fewer students and 1,711 more employees.

that the district budgeted for 501 more full-time equivalent teachers’ aides for next year, which more than doubles the increase from the previous eight years combined.

The Seattle union set up its understaffing message months in advance, releasing a member survey indicating that .

This might sound alarming, until you check to see what percentage of school employees left over the previous five-year period. . So losing one-third in the next five years would actually be a marked improvement in retention.

These details probably won’t figure into the settlement, however. The union boasted of the positive coverage it received and even used paid advertising for its positions.

At least one member of the school board laid the blame for the impasse on the legislature. “We can’t squeeze the water that we need to live out of the rocks they’ve given us,” .

State law requires 180 days of instruction, so the strike days will be made up one way or another. But for students who have already missed almost two years of classroom time, the strike put them even further behind.

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears most Wednesdays; see the full archive.

While there is no speculation how long the labor action could last in the state’s largest district, strikes over the last year have ranged from a couple of days in Columbus, Ohio, to three weeks in Minneapolis.

At issue in contract negotiations is higher pay for teachers, aides and other school workers, support for multilingual learners and to protect special education staffing levels as the district implements a long-sought plan to allow students with disabilities to spend more time in general education classrooms.��

Like districts throughout the country, the Seattle school system has lost students since the pandemic began, that lower enrollment — which translates to fewer state tuition dollars — will create budget problems going forward.      

Coming out of the holiday weekend, the across-the-board pay increases to the union’s 6,000 members, financial incentives to educators who have or are willing to earn credentials qualifying them to work with English learners, and an increase in the number of school social workers and nurses. 

At the same time, after , educators and district leaders in the Seattle suburb of Kent announced a tentative agreement, ending a delay to the start of the school year for 25,000 students.

The Seattle strike marks a fourth disrupted academic year for students in Washington, where tensions between district and union leaders over reopening schools in the wake of the nation’s earliest COVID shutdowns kept many students in remote learning until the final weeks of the 2020-21 year. 

According to a maintained by Burbio, Washington state schools had the fourth-lowest rate of in-person learning in the 2020-21 academic year, with more than three-fourths of students in distance learning. Maryland, Oregon and California were the only states less likely to welcome students back in classrooms in person. 

As a result, Gov. Jay Inslee issued an executive order in March 2021 requiring districts to offer in-person classes for at least a third of the school weeks. Seattle was among 35 Washington districts that did not receive some federal pandemic aid from the state because of an inadequate reopening plan. 

A May 2021 analysis by the Seattle Times found that across the state, compliance with the governor’s order varied widely, with some districts providing much more in-person instruction than others. High school students in Seattle Public Schools generally attended classes in person two days a week but for less than three hours each day. 

Last year, like districts throughout the country, Seattle schools planned for in-person learning but was disrupted by bus driver shortages, Omicron variant surges and other problems.

The start of the strike to make alternate arrangements for their children. The district announced that students could pick up free lunches at several school sites and said it was reaching out to community organizations for child care support.

Two months into the school year, the 2,800-student district is seeking an extra cafeteria worker, two additional bus drivers and four paraeducators — meaning the school system is operating at about 7 percent below capacity for those roles. Periodically, district administrators have had to fill in as substitute teachers and the transportation director, normally a desk position, has been forced to drive bus routes.

“The impact of a staffing shortage feels more severe this year than it has in the past,” Tukwila Human Resources Director Aaron Draganov told ����Ӱ��, noting that the district recently saw an “unusually high number of retirements,” especially in transportation.

But just a few miles to the northeast, on Mercer Island, the story is completely different.

Located between Seattle and Bellevue in a community that is home to a Microsoft co-founder and numerous retired pro athletes, and where typical home values land around $2 million, according to Zillow, Mercer Island School District has largely avoided such staffing woes. 

“We are not experiencing the same struggles as other districts,” Executive Director of Human Resources Erin Battersby told ����Ӱ��. Over 98 percent of support staff roles in the 4,500-student district are filled, according to data she provided. 

“If you want to talk about staff shortages, we’re probably not the district to talk to, because we’re doing pretty well,” the HR director said.

The contrasting circumstances in the two school systems represent a fissure in staffing patterns well beyond the Seattle area. 

During a school year marked by fears of K-12 labor shortages — with nationwide reports of , superintendents and school cafeterias due to a lack of workers — a new analysis out of Washington state quantifies the depth of disparities in teacher and staff vacancy rates between high- and low-poverty school systems.

The research, published Nov. 9 as a by the Center for Education Data and Research, combed through the job postings listed in three-quarters of Washington school districts, which account for 98 percent of all students in the state.

Poorer districts were in need of paraeducators and transportation workers at roughly twice and three times the rates, respectively, of their more affluent counterparts, the analysis revealed. They were also seeking a higher share of janitors, nurses, special educators and teachers for English language learners, among other roles — posing yet another setback for the very students most in need of catching up on learning missed during the pandemic.

“The shortages are breaking along existing lines of disparity,” Dan Goldhaber, a University of Washington education economist who co-authored the analysis, told ����Ӱ��. 

The data flush out an emerging nationwide picture of school staffing that previously included little systematic accounting of districts’ on-the-ground conditions, instead relying on local anecdotes and high-level numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

“Having the Washington data is absolutely important to understand which types of workers districts are struggling to hire the most,” said Chad Aldeman, policy director of Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab and a in critiquing coverage and public perception of school staffing shortages.

Teachers for special education and English learning programs were the most sought-after instructional roles, while districts reported that they most needed teacher assistants and athletic coaches as support staff.

Before the pandemic, public K-12 education employed about 8 million workers, according to federal data, but that number fell to a low of 7.3 million during the first half of the 2020-21 school year. The count has since rebounded to about 7.7 million, but the sector has yet to fully make up its pandemic losses. 

Last year, schools that went remote often didn’t need as many bus drivers, janitors or other support roles, explained Aldeman. Now as districts bring those roles back, they have to compete with mega-employers, such as Amazon and Uber. 

This is a “very competitive hiring season,” he said. “����’s definitely an applicant’s market in the sense of, they can be kind of choosy in where they want to go.”

Some of the nation’s largest districts reported hundreds of unfilled positions as of late October. Palm Beach County Schools told ����Ӱ�� that they had 1,044 vacancies, including for 351 teachers. Hillsborough County Public Schools, which includes Tampa Bay, reported 1,274 openings, 432 of which were teaching roles. And Chicago Public Schools said it was still hiring for over 3,400 staff, including 680 teachers.

More affluent districts may have an easier time filling positions because salaries are generally higher and the work is seen as less stressful. But the reasons explaining those vacancies remain blurry. With a huge federal windfall landing on districts’ doorsteps thanks to $122 billion for schools in the American Rescue Plan passed in March, many districts are hiring for new positions that never previously existed in efforts to lower class sizes. 

“We don’t have a good sense of the cause of the job openings,” said Aldeman. “Is it because the high-poverty districts can’t find people, or is it that they’re able to hire more right now?”

Regardless, the disparities in vacancy rates worry Tequilla Brownie, executive vice president of The New Teacher Project. She knows that when under-resourced schools have high shares of empty positions, it can translate into long-lasting instructional deficits for poor students. 

Research from her organization found that, in Arkansas, where teachers are in short supply statewide, students in high-poverty districts were . Black students were five times more likely than white students to attend school in a high-shortage district.

Vacancies have been “overwhelmingly felt” by Black and brown students, she told ����Ӱ��. Now, with shortages continuing to fall along lines of race and class, she fears “kids will not get access to the learning acceleration and the learning recovery that they need because you don’t have enough effective teachers.”

Some districts, however, appear to have broken the mold. In Dallas, teachers receive extra compensation — sometimes netting over $100,000 per year — to work in high-poverty schools. The incentive seems to have helped keep educators around: The district estimates just a 17 percent turnover rate from this past year, down from as high as 23 percent in 2015 (though the most recent figure is a slight bump above its 14 percent rate in 2020). 

“We have highly successful teachers who have proven they can be successful at a lot of [high-needs] schools,” Dallas Superintendent Michael Hinojosa told ����Ӱ��. “That has definitely insulated us in comparison to other major urban districts.”

Rural districts, too, have seen shortages — sometimes more acutely than urban schools. Data from the study out of Washington show rural school systems had higher vacancy rates for special educators than suburban or urban districts, while urban districts had a greater need for science and math teachers. Bus driver, paraeducator and athletic worker shortages were much steeper in rural schools than other districts.

Schools looking to lure high-quality educators, perhaps mimicking the compensation scheme in Dallas, should budget carefully for the long term, advised Aldeman. Extra cash from relief dollars is available now, but it won’t be around forever.

“Thanks to the infusion of federal funds, districts may be tempted to increase base salaries,” he said. “But that short-term thinking could lead to layoffs or other painful decisions when the federal funds run out in a few short years.”

Another strategy for districts to help bolster their teacher corps may revolve around the staff already within the school building, said Brownie. These workers, such as paraprofessionals, who also tend to better represent the diversity of schools’ student bodies than credentialed teachers, can be helped to acquire the skills and training needed to move into full-time instructor roles.

“There definitely are ways that districts, and maybe in partnership with higher ed institutions, could think more innovatively about trying to help those teachers fast-track to get trained and then be placed into classrooms,” she said.

A report published in March by the RAND Corporation found that nearly half of all Black teachers said they at the end of last school year — threatening to further widen diversity gaps in school staffing. Currently, about 4 in 5 educators nationwide are white, compared to less than half of all public school students.  Though this year’s data on teacher turnover are not yet available, the RAND finding underscores the need for schools to consider tactics, such as those suggested by Brownie, to diversify their teaching force. 

When schools are short on staff, it’s the families and teachers who feel the effects, said Annette Anderson, deputy director of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Safe and Healthy Schools.

The K-12 expert is also a mother of three students in the Baltimore City Public School system and, recently, around the dinner table, her eighth-grade daughter reported that her sixth-grade cousin had been in her class that day. The youngsters’ cohorts had been merged due to lack of staff.

“That’s a concern for me, because that means my daughter is not getting the level of instruction that she should in her classroom,” the Baltimore mother told ����Ӱ��.

“It’s not the teacher’s fault that took off,” Anderson continued. She empathizes as a former classroom teacher and principal. “It’s not the fault of the administrator, who’s trying to figure it out in the zero hour.”

“That’s a process and a policy issue,” she said.

Seattle Public Schools announced that its 52,000 students would have due to large shares of staff making Veterans Day into a four-day weekend. And in Montgomery County, Maryland, the Board of Education voted this week to make a scheduled half-day before Thanksgiving a vacation day for the district’s 165,000 students because there are to fill in for the large number of educators taking time off before the break.

In an even more extreme case, in West Michigan made a last-minute call to shutter their doors from Nov. 9 to Nov. 15 due to high shares of staff out for COVID-19, other illnesses or for personal reasons, the district announced Monday.

“We are unable to sufficiently staff our buildings to meet the needs of our students. Sub shortages are not unique to NPS, and this is a challenge we, as well as many other districts are facing,” the district wrote in a Nov. 9 unsigned to families.

In Seattle, requested substitute teachers for the day after Veterans Day, the district said.

“We are aware of a larger than normal number of [Seattle Public School] staff taking leave on Friday, and do not believe we have adequate personnel to open schools,” the district explained in an email sent to parents on Tuesday, just three days before the shutdown. 

In Montgomery County, the sudden change to the Thanksgiving holiday prompted outrage from some parents.

“To give families 13 days of notice … have you no consideration for parents in health care, parents who are essential workers, parents who basically count on the school schedule that you publish?” parent Dr. Jennifer Reesman told . “You basically told us all that you don’t care about us.”

The closures further compound the disruptions that schools have weathered over the past 20 months of the pandemic — exacerbating academic, social and emotional challenges for many students.

“Now is the time to double down and hopefully get students even more access to even more great instruction, not less,” Tequilla Brownie, executive vice president of The New Teacher Project, told ����Ӱ��.

With dwindling substitute teacher reserves in many school systems nationwide, Daniel Domenech, executive director of the School Superintendents Association, said there’s little district leaders can do when educators request leave around the holidays.

“These are days that teachers can take,” he told ����Ӱ��, explaining that the right to use paid time off, known as PTO, is stipulated in many educator contracts. “Ordinarily, school districts would rely on substitutes to cover for teachers. The problem is, you can’t find substitutes.”

Closures are “not what superintendents want,” the AASA leader continued. “They want to get the kids back to school … They’re doing everything that they can with the resources that they have to mitigate the situation.” 

The pandemic, however, has shown that school systems can get creative, Brownie pointed out. Some districts tapped central office staff to help out with remote learning. She wonders whether it could have been possible to replicate those solutions to avoid school closures this time around.

“The most dismal option is to shutter the doors,” said the education equity expert.

In Montgomery County, the scheduling change comes on the heels of weeks of educator frustration and burnout. Two weeks ago, teachers held a to protest staffing shortages that, they said, were exhausting and stressing out employees. Signs taped in vehicle windows lamented “skeleton crews” and educators “drowning” in their workload, The Washington Post reported.

During a press conference Tuesday, union President Jennifer Martin warned of a “great resignation” in Maryland’s largest district if Montgomery County does not improve conditions for its teachers. The school system currently has , including 161 teaching positions, according to local reporting.

“We hope you are able to take some time to rest and recharge during the extended Thanksgiving Break,” said a Nov. 9 to families and teachers signed Montgomery County Public Schools.

Many school systems across the country have tried to preempt such situations by scheduling extra time for staff and students to recharge. Over a dozen districts — including and — recently announced days off or shortened schedules to fight burnout and provide mental health breaks for educators, according to a recent from Burbio, a data service that has tracked school calendars through the pandemic. 

District announcements generally did not mention substitute teacher shortages, though it’s possible the desire to avoid needing more coverage for teachers than they could supply also played into the calculus for some school administrators.

Policy varies on whether the days off will have to be made up later in the school year. Most states require that schools be in session 180 days a year. A local that Montgomery County’s 2021-22 school calendar had 182 days built in so the additional day off would not affect it. The Newaygo Public Schools used up five of its snow days in the current closure, .

The disruptions, planned and unplanned, are yet another byproduct of the pandemic, said Domenech. He’s hopeful that newly authorized vaccines for younger children will help make the situation more normal by the spring. 

But in the meantime, he acknowledged that the scheduling changes may frustrate many families.

“Working parents very much are dependent on [having their children in school],” he said.

Over the next year, they visited dairy farms, brushed Highland cattle’s long hair, and branched off to learn about elk, deer and llamas. They read stories about cows, counted cows and compared different breeds. That’s the kind of child-led learning experience that Nelson plans to continue this fall when she participates for the first time in Vermont’s Universal Prekindergarten program.

“We base our curriculum on children’s interests,” said Nelson, who has 26 years of experience in the field and even has former students who enroll their own children in her program. “We know the kids’ learning style. We have a history with them.”

Allowing providers such as Nelson to participate in a publicly funded pre-K system could speed up the timeline for providing universal access to 3- and 4-year-olds — along with tuition-free community college, the other half of President Joe Biden’s plan to provide four more years of free public education. But from the National Institute for Early Education Research and Home Grown, an organization working to improve home-based child care, suggests it’s not that simple. Including family child care in pre-K initiatives could satisfy parents who prefer their home-like environment and increase the supply of preschool programs in communities with limited supply, the authors say. However, they caution policymakers against expecting in-home providers to immediately meet the same standards and regulations as pre-K centers.

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As Congress begins writing a $3.5 trillion plan that is expected to include $200 billion for early-childhood education, the report recommends lawmakers take a gradual approach that considers the perspectives of providers and parents.

“����’s really tricky for home-based providers. They lose out when they don’t get included [in public pre-K programs],” said Natalie Renew, Home Grown’s director. But pre-K systems that are primarily oriented toward schools and centers also disadvantage the providers and the families they serve, she added.

The primary downside, she said, is that if more home-based providers seek state funds to serve just preschoolers that could mean less space for infants and toddlers, space that is already in . Working parents are more likely to choose family child care over centers for , surveys show.

According to of Biden’s American Families Plan, families would be able to “choose the settings that work best for them.”

‘People coming into your home’

Parents family child care because it offers a more personalized environment, allows them to keep siblings in the same program and can offer flexible hours that centers can’t accommodate. Including home-based providers in state pre-K also could further diversify the workforce, allowing parents to find caregivers that reflect their culture and speak their language.

Family child care providers have to to be licensed, but many state pre-K regulations regarding facility space, hours of instruction and education requirements for teachers don’t easily translate to someone who cares for children in their living room. State funding could be a predictable source of income for providers, but it also means “more people coming into your home” to monitor compliance, Renew said.

New Jersey, for one, requires pre-K classrooms to be 950 square feet. “Would homes need dedicated spaces for the pre-K program with minimum square footage per child equivalent to the classroom requirement?” the authors ask.

States often require lead pre-K teachers to have a two- or four-year degree and special training in child development. Currently almost 50 percent of home-based providers have no college education, according to the report.

Educational requirements could increase the quality of family child care, but Renew said there’s a mismatch between most college-level early-childhood programs and the realities of family child care — especially around implementing a pre-K curriculum for 3- and 4-year-olds while still attending to the needs of babies and toddlers.

“It doesn’t work if we turn every family child care provider into a teeny tiny center,” she said.

Lanette Dumas, executive director of the National Association for Family Child Care, said she’s encouraged by the direction the administration is taking, but wants funding for an “on-ramp” to help providers earn degrees and make other modifications to their programs.

Finally, Renew added, there’s a false assumption that home-based child care is cheaper. The report argues that including such providers on a large scale could end up costing more.

In the Seattle Preschool Program, for example, a coach or consultant visiting a center would provide training for two to four teachers at once and “indirectly impact up to 40 kids,” said Monica Liang-Aguirre, who leads the program at the Seattle Department of Education and Early Learning. With family child care, that same coach might be working with one provider who serves maybe two or three children. The coach is still receiving the same pay and likely has added travel expenses to reach at-home providers.

Renew said there’s not yet enough research on whether children benefit from home-based pre-K programs in the same way they do in centers.

San Francisco has the most experience, with at-home providers representing 18 percent of the city’s pre-K sites. In Seattle’s program, funded by a local , 25 at-home providers — about 2 percent of the overall number — are expected to participate this fall.

Liang-Aguirre said the department waived the bachelor’s degree requirement because it wasn’t realistic for home-based providers. The majority are immigrants and speak languages other than English.

They serve families that are often reluctant to use out-of-home care and are “trying to figure out if it’s a good idea to let their children go to preschool,” Liang-Aguirre said. “We see it as a really important model and an important way to make preschool accessible for all families.”

On Fridays, Mariela Garcia listens with earbuds as classes from Eastwood Academy in Houston stream in through Microsoft Teams.

But she also keeps an eye on business.

When her mother lost her job at an adoption agency at the start of the pandemic, the senior began thinking of ways to contribute — and cover her college application fees. Each week, she spends three days shopping and prepping ingredients for her Mexican pastry business, Hecho con Amor, or Made with Love. To get ready for her weekly shift at a farmer’s market, she folds empanada dough over apple, pumpkin and cheesecake filling while signed into virtual classes.

“I’m listening to the teacher, but I’m also getting DMs on my Instagram — ‘Hey, what are your flavors?’” said Garcia. “That’s potential business, and I would hate to lose any customers.”

For many teens, a year of the coronavirus has meant not only the loss of in-person learning and time with friends, but added shifts at convenience stores and retail shops to help keep their families afloat during the recession. As kids adapt, many of their teachers and schools are improvising as well, extending deadlines and creating new ways to stay in touch. The huge workload is leaving many students stressed out, and some teachers worry they’re in danger of becoming a statistic: the estimated 1 out of 20 teens who drop out of high school each year, according to .

Jay Novelo, a dean at Tyee High School, near Seattle, was hired to handle student discipline. But with schools closed, his main job is keeping tabs on students and encouraging them to not give up on school.

For most, it’s a tough choice. “Do I want to … survive school or survive life?” Novelo said. “I can’t blame the students — a lot of them choose work.”

One of the 14 students he checks in on weekly is Swin Cobón Sanchez, who bounces between school and two jobs. By day, he cleans houses with his immigrant parents; at night, he mops, vacuums and empties trash at a downtown Seattle medical clinic — a second job he picked up in part to help pay the family’s bills.

That doesn’t leave a lot of room in the day for remote learning, but he makes time for weekly check-ins with Novelo. They chat about soccer, Sanchez’s 2017 Chevy Silverado and the extra class he’s taking to hit the 24 credits he needs to graduate this year.

“I like it, because I know somebody is staying on me,” Sanchez said.

Teens who have joined the workforce hail from families that are predominantly Hispanic and Black, front-line workers and first-generation immigrants who have borne the brunt of the job loss and brought on by the pandemic, teachers and counselors said. , four in 10 children live in families that have struggled to cover basic expenses during the past year. But the relief bill President Joe Biden signed last week aims to fill some of those gaps, providing most families up to $300 per week for each child through the end of 2021.

Some students, like Garcia, are thriving under the flexibility afforded by the pandemic: Despite the job, she’s earning A’s and B’s. But the lifestyle is not for everyone.

“There are definitely some kids who are having issues around time management,” said Joshua Weintraub, the director of college and career success at Lighthouse Community Charter School in Oakland, California. ‘There aren’t enough hours in the day. They’re prescribing themselves caffeine.”

Yasmine Esquivel, a senior at Lighthouse, works up to 30 hours a week at Gap, helping her mom with groceries because she saw “how tight money was.”

“I get stressed and I know my mom can see it,” she said. “She sometimes tells me to leave my job to focus on school.”

‘The lifeline our students needed’

Balancing work and academics is harder in districts where schools have reopened. When in-person classes resumed at Oak Ridge High School in Orlando, Florida, in August, only about 500 of the school’s 2,600 students returned.

Jenevieve Jackson, who teaches digital photo production, still can’t get in touch with who are supposed to be in her classes. Administrators, she said, have been “relentless in trying to find out what is going on with these kids.”

She suspects a lot of them supervise younger siblings or went back to jobs at places like SeaWorld and Universal Studios when the parks reopened.

Jackson drove to students’ houses in September to loan her remaining classroom cameras to those without cell phones so they could work on projects. And she gave them her own version of a “pandemic stimulus.”

“I said, ‘Your grades suck. Here’s 150 points,’” she said.

Teens don’t always work traditional jobs. Some young Black men in Atlanta have been surviving the pandemic as “” peddling cold drinks to motorists at freeway off-ramps. Javon Solomon, a ninth grader at Booker T. Washington High School, was one of them.

“My mom was working in the mall. She was released from her job,” Solomon said. “We didn’t have enough money or the resources we needed.”

He could pocket $120 a day selling water, but didn’t always feel safe. Many residents consider the young entrepreneurs a nuisance. Fights have broken out between kids competing for street corners and some have gotten arrested.

C.J. Stewart, a former outfielder for the Chicago Cubs, gave Solomon an alternative — earn $25 an hour as a coaching “ambassador” working with young Little Leaguers, often from affluent white families.

“If you’re not giving Black teenage boys an opportunity to make money, you’re not really helping them,” Stewart said. His youth baseball nonprofit — Launch Expose Advise Direct, or LEAD — connects families with resources for food, clothing, housing and jobs. Some of them, he said, would be homeless if their sons weren’t in the program.

Solomon has the potential to earn over $1,000 a month with private clients and group lessons, in exchange for maintaining good grades, attendance and behavior. Angela Coaxum-Young, principal at Washington High, called LEAD “the lifeline some of our students needed to stay in the game of life.” When schools were closed, Stewart was often her only means of communicating with students because the “family was without a phone or had abruptly moved.”

Keeping up with those transitions in students’ lives is why the Highline Public Schools near Seattle assigned staff members like Novelo at Tyee to stay in contact with students. Superintendent Susan Enfield called it “the most important thing that we do.”

Novelo still has students he can’t reach because of outdated phone numbers and addresses. Students are supposed to let schools know if they’re working, but he discovered many of them hadn’t bothered. In addition to weekly Zoom meetings or phone calls to 14 students, he makes socially distant home visits and even delivered an internet hotspot to a student working at Jiffy Lube. The teen offered him a free oil change in return.

If school resumes this semester, Sanchez said he’ll give up his second job cleaning the clinic at night. But he gets upset when his parents talk of exhaustion, aches and pains. He wants to keep helping with the bills. With Sanchez, they can clean more houses.

“My parents are getting older,” he said. “I want to leave them in a safe place.”

This is one installment of a special series published in partnership with The Guardian: ‘ See additional coverage of the past year for students and schools: ‘12 Million Students Still Lack Reliable Internet‘ and ‘Families Face Steep Truancy Fines, Contentious Court Battles As Pandemic Creates School Attendance Barriers.’

Lead Image: Swin Cobón Sanchez cleans a medical clinic in downtown Seattle in the evenings, a second job he picked up last summer. (University of Washington Medicine Primary Care at Belltown)

As ambassador, LeVine persuaded 30 Swiss companies with U.S. facilities to extend those opportunities to students here. Now commissioner of the Washington state Employment Security Department, she continues to seed the idea that the traditional “four by four” model — four years of high school followed by four years of college — is old news.

LeVine was one of a number of speakers who convened to mark the 25th anniversary of the Center on Reinventing Public Education by considering what leaps, conceptual and practical, will be required to provide all students with the skills to both keep up with automation, robotics and artificial intelligence, and ensure a healthy democracy.

A Seattle-based think tank, CRPE generates research and ideas about issues in education, ranging from the effectiveness of school governance models to best practices in equitable finance and charter school accountability.

The symposium explored ways in which the traditional concept of school could be challenged, pushing particularly on the notion that the traditional high-school-to-college continuum leaves too many talented people behind. About a third of Americans have a four-year college degree, yet an estimated 6.3 million jobs are going unfilled for lack of skilled candidates.

The author of this story moderated the panel anchored by LeVine, “Rethinking High School to College and Career Pathways.”

Because public education in the United States is geared toward degree attainment and not skill acquisition, employers see a degree as a proxy for career readiness when, in fact, it doesn’t necessarily mean a job seeker has the ability to collaborate, solve problems or succeed at other tasks that require complex intellectual skills to complete.

The traditional four-year college model is as antiquated as its K-12 precursor, attendees agreed. Even as they are hobbled by enormous debts, graduates don’t necessarily possess the traits that assure them a well-paid job.

After nine years of compulsory schooling, LeVine told attendees, every Swiss student has the opportunity to opt in to a national system of apprenticeships. Winning one is prestigious, and 70 percent of Swiss teens participate, choosing one of 250 career pathways. They continue to go to high school part time, and many later earn a college degree.

Swiss businesses contribute 60 percent of the $6 billion annual cost and receive a return on their investment of up to 10 percent, LeVine said. Business sees the expense — the equivalent of 1 percent of the GDP when state and federal contributions are added — as an investment, not an act of corporate responsibility.

Despite the system’s seemingly enormous price tag, the apprenticeship model is actually 40 percent less costly than full-time attendance at a traditional high school. Students who finish the equivalent of high school without completing an apprenticeship are on an academic track that leads directly to college.

The magic, which is difficult to communicate to anyone steeped in the American concept of school, is that there are no dead ends for students. One may earn a graphic design credential as an apprentice, yet go on to become a doctor.

LeVine was joined by women spearheading efforts to create apprenticeship systems in Washington and Colorado. Home to tech-fueled corporations such as Microsoft, Amazon and Boeing, Washington already is grappling with the workforce implications of automation. The state has launched multiple efforts to increase the number of students in the pipeline to fill skilled jobs that don’t require a traditional degree.

At the same time, its industries are piloting some of the technologies that will disrupt the job market. For example, a first-of-its-kind Amazon store in downtown Seattle has done away with traditional customer service; shoppers’ devices are scanned and their accounts billed as they enter, fill their carts and leave without checking out.

The workforce of tomorrow, CRPE Director Robin Lake said, places a premium on skills only the human mind possesses, such as teamwork, empathy, deep thinking and problem-solving.

“If we’re honest with ourselves, no one has a plan for how schools are going to deliver all of these things while still struggling to just deliver the basic competencies,” she said.

The kindergarten-to-college pipeline provides too little of those, and does so in a way that perpetuates inequities, she said. Shifting the discussion from talking about schools to talking about students could help usher in what one attendee called the “Age of Agility,” in which an array of experiences offer opportunities for all kids, not just students ranked as “good” by conventional measures.

“We need to design for the tails, and not the means,” Lake said, referring to students with disabilities and other challenges who are not typically thought of as likely talents, as opposed to those who fall squarely in the middle academically. Or, put another way: “The student is the ‘X’ we need to solve for.”

The unskilled, routine jobs previously open to students who don’t make it to and through traditional higher ed are being automated at a rapid pace, which means the middle class is particularly vulnerable to the shift, Andreas Schleicher, director for education and skills at the international Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, told the group.

“In the past, in the industrial era, we needed only a few leaders with lots of people working for them,” Schleicher said. “Now we need all leaders.”

Hand in glove with doing away with the notion of high school and college as two separate — and lengthy and expensive — experiences, other ideas advanced at the symposium and in published by CRPE explored tying education funding much more closely to individual students, who could use funds to pay for everything from out-of-school enrichment activities to special education services; creating system navigators to help families choose an array of educational options to best meet their child’s needs; and finding ways to design evaluations that measure success in such highly individualized environments.

Communities can start, à la Switzerland, by tapping local businesses and civic organizations interested in ensuring the right talents are being nurtured, symposium speakers agreed.

Summarized Todd Rose, a faculty member at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and author of noted books on individualization, “We have to find a way to do for education what Apple did for music.”

Disclosures: The Walton Family Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York provide financial support to ����Ӱ�� and for the Center on Reinventing Public Education’s 25th anniversary symposium.

����Ӱ��’s coverage of the skills gap, the challenges and opportunities of better educating our future workforce, and efforts underway to improve local employment pipelines is underwritten in part by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation.