A World of Difference

What will the “new normal” look like in the COVID-19 era?

- RON CASSIE

Matt Hornbeck, the principal of Hampstead Hill Academy, a pre-K to 8th-grade public school next to Patterson Park, found out Maryland schools were closing at the same time everyone else did—after Gov. Larry Hogan’s afternoon press conference on Thursday, March 12. It meant he and his staff had less than 24 hours to prepare 859 students for a transition to online “school,” which would last for the remainder of the academic year due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Hornbeck’s staff got as many learning packets to the kids as they could. They spent the next few weeks safely distributing Chromebooks. Teachers began posting assignments, reading books to students online, and creating homemade instructional videos. They provided sample schedules to parents and organized “coach” classes—where kids could log-on in a live setting and ask their teacher questions.

Given the city’s gaping digital divide, hoping that a class of 25 city school children would start showing up in daily 8 a.m. Google classrooms was never an option. Many Baltimore kids simply don’t have WiFi at home. Others don’t have a parent in the house during the school day to help navigate the process. Even at Hampstead Hill, the highest performing school in the city, the staff still hadn’t heard from 55 students—and that was after six weeks of diligently whittling down their “hardest to reach” list.

Schools, like Hampstead Hill, are more than sources of neighborhood pride. They are hubs providing breakfasts, lunches, afterschool activities, and childcare. It’s where kids make friends and connect, and parents do, too.

“It doesn’t look anything like school used to look,” Hornbeck says. “It’s hard to even call it school.”