DISCONNECTION

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools have increasingly segregated along racial and class lines since a federal judge’s 1999 ruling ended a successful, 28-year desegregation program. The COVID lockdown of schools has hurt everybody in the system—and widened the gap between its haves and have-nots

- JARED MISNER

On her 18th day of first grade, a Thursday in late September, Khloe Johnson sits at a pink-and-blue, Trolls-themed desk and tries to learn to read.

Her designated spot is her family’s living room in a four-bedroom, two-bathroom house in the Genesis Park neighborhood, wedged between Interstate 77 and Statesville Avenue just north of uptown. Eight people live here; six are children in school. The living room, dining room, and kitchen share a single open space. A few feet away, two of her siblings use the dining room table as a desk while the others work in their bedrooms.

Khloe, a shy girl in jean shorts and PAW Patrol slippers, “attends” Walter G. Byers School just a few blocks away. But the COVID lockdown in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools has forced her and her siblings to learn from here. It is not going well. CMS has provided 6-year-old Khloe with an iPad and fold-over cover that doubles as a stand, but she has trouble keeping it upright, and it repeatedly topples to the floor. Because she’s still learning to read, she also can’t tell time, so she relies on nearby family members to follow the class schedule. No teacher is present to help her type letters she does not yet recognize or find needed apps like DreamBox, Zoom, or Epic by their written names. When the teacher instructs her to use them, Khloe relies on her memory of their icons and swipes through screens until she finds them.