These kids want to go to school. The main obstacle? Paperwork

ATLANTA (AP) — It's unclear to Tameka how — or even when — her children became unenrolled from Atlanta Public Schools. But it was traumatic when, in fall of 2021, they figured out it had happened.

- Bianca Vázquez Toness

After more than a year of online learning, students were all required to come back to school. Tameka was skeptical that the schools could keep her kids safe from COVID-19. One morning (in a test run), she sent two kids to school.

Her oldest daughter, then in seventh grade, and her second youngest, a boy entering first grade, boarded buses. She had yet to register the youngest girl, who was entering kindergarten. And her older son, a boy with Down syndrome, stayed home because she wasn't sure he could mask.

After a few hours, one school called: Come pick up your son, they told her. He was no longer enrolled.

Around lunchtime, the other called: Come get your daughter, they told her. She doesn't have a class schedule.

Tameka's children — all four of them — have been home ever since.