For Dr. Brenda Cassellius, the average pandemic workday is long. Fourteen hours long.
And for good reason, as students and faculty in the Boston Public Schools system continue to struggle with the abrupt transition to remote learning.
Current issues range from a lack of student resources, to an excess of at-home family issues that make it hard to participate at all.
“We have 4,500 kids who are homeless each day in Boston,” she told Boston Public Radio on Tuesday. "We have families who are losing their jobs, and lots of our students are on the front lines at grocery stores or nursing homes [to help] the family out... I think people forget how really, really hard it is."
She said she was eager to bring students back to classrooms, even in what she described as a “hybrid” capacity, where students would rotate time spent in school in order to keep socially distant.
“I am more and more ready to have our children back [in school] for their own child development, and for their own health and wellbeing,” she said. "Because we can feed them, we can see when they’re hurting, we can teach them, and school is just so much more than a place [where] you get a lesson. It’s a place where you get love, and it’s a place where you feel safe."
"I’m afraid we’re losing that,” she said.
Cassellius rejected data published late May in the Boston Globe indicating that around 10,000 students aren't logging onto classes, and said a number of teachers are engaging students independently, or using applications that don’t register in the still-evolving BPS data system.
The best estimate of the number of students checking out, she said, is "somewhere around 9,000.” She also indicated that her administration would release more definitive data sometime this week.
