Kajin M̧ajeļ: https://chikinmelele.com/wawein-an-kar-covid-19-jelet-jikuul-ko-ilo-arkansas/
As schools around the country work to return students to full-time in-person learning, schools in Arkansas faced the challenge head on last fall. Abby Zimmardi with the ArkansasCovid project took a closer look at how the continuing COVID-19 pandemic has affected the reopening of schools in Arkansas by district. Arkansas Covid is a project of the University of Arkansas School of Journalism and Strategic Media under the supervision of Assistant Professor of Journalism, Rob Well, PhD. Link from here for an overview of their project and a few graphs that illustrate various COVID-19 trends local to Arkansas.
Zimmardi, a senior at the University of Arkansas studying journalism and Anthropology, reported on the covid-impact on schools and explains the data from September through December 2020 for COVID-19 by school district in Arkansas. We summarize her report here in Marshallese and soon you will be able to listen to the recorded story online. She looks at the four school districts with the highest rates of COVID-19 cases. All of these school districts have high percentages of Hispanic students. Just less than half of the students enrolled at Green Forest, Springdale and Rogers school districts are Hispanic. A third of the students in Hope are Hispanic.
You can click on the school districts in the graph below to look at active cases over time and also to see how many teachers and students who have gotten covid. The blue line for active cases goes up and down as people recover from the virus. All the other lines will grow as more and more people total have tested positive for covid.
Green Forest is a small school district of 1,325 students—about 50 students are Pacific Islander. They had the highest rate of 38.79 cases for every 1000 people. At the beginning of December, a total of 15 teachers and 53 students had gotten sick. Two kindergarten classes and the superintendent were quarantined. They are grateful that there were no serious cases or hospitalizations. The district has taken precautions through daily temperature checks for teachers and students, sanitizing buses every day, and cleaning classrooms every hour. The district replaced water fountains with water bottle stations and installed more hand sanitizer dispensers.
Springdale School District is the largest school district in Arkansas of over 21,000 students. Over 2,500 students are Pacific Islander. They had the second highest rate of 30.66 cases for every 1000 people. At the beginning of December, a total of 159 teachers and 639 students had gotten sick. The district requires that all teachers and students wear a mask during school. They also put in water bottle filling stations and increased cleaning. The district also provided a choice of hybrid or virtual learning for students and teachers had the choice to take a leave of absence if they did not feel comfortable teaching in person. Due to a shortage of teachers and substitutes and a high number of people in quarantine, all of the schools moved to remote instruction for two weeks from November 23 to December 7. Some teachers who had recovered from covid are still experience fatigue and have chosen to take early retirement.
Rogers School District has more than 15,000 students, of which 300 are Pacific Islander. They had a covid-rate of 23.9 cases for every 1000 students. At the beginning of December, a total of 112 faculty and 367 people had gotten sick. In December, Benton County had the 2nd highest number of new cases for counties. The superintendent said that the high rate in school reflects the spread in the community. They are prepared to switch online if needed. All teachers and students have laptops or Chromebooks and there are 1000 portable wi-fi devices for students without internet.
Hope School District has almost 2,400 students. They had a covid-rate of 21.87 cases for every 1000 people. At the beginning of December, a total of 25 faculty and 50 students had gotten sick. All of their students had Chromebooks and the district prepared hard drives with 2 weeks to 1 month of lessons for students in quarantine who did not have internet. 4 out of 6 schools had to move online due to active cases or quarantined teachers. The superintendent said that teachers were contracting the virus outside of school, from the community in churches. Afterwards, the school district required all faculty meetings to be done online. He said, “If there are three people or more, you better Zoom it.”