PARENT: COVID Or Not, Kids Home Means No Tennis, Lunches At Club
BOCA RATON, FL (BocaNewsNow.com) — The Palm Beach County School District is currently live-streaming a rundown of the survey we published a short time ago.
A surprising takeaway in a county with 180,000 kids in very diverse areas: parents in the overwhelmingly white, well-off communities of Boca Raton, Delray Beach and Boynton Beach want their kids in physical school full time. But parents of children in areas that are not thought of as being well off, including the Glades and what might be considered more “urban” areas with larger populations of African American and Hispanic families, want their kids home until COVID-19 is under control.
To put it another way: parents who may have the luxury of working from home want their kids in school. Parents who are in areas with statistically low household incomes and living in homes that aren’t advertised on billboards in Boca Raton or Delray Beach want their kids to stay home until COVID infection numbers decline.
To put it another way: parents who may have the luxury of working from home want their kids in school.Parents who are in areas with statistically low household incomes and living in homes that aren’t advertised on billboards in Boca Raton or Delray Beach want their kids to stay home until COVID infection numbers decline.
Said a parent contacting BocaNewsNow.com while live-streaming the event: “Parents in Boca want to be able to play tennis. They don’t want their kids home getting in the way of their social plans.”
BocaNewsNow.com received several messages indicating a similar sentiment.
Area Financial Statistics
Median Annual income in the Glades (Belle Glade): $24,901. Median annual income in Boca Raton: $71,867.
Racial makeup: Belle Glade is roughly 59 percent Black or African American. It is 38.11 percent White.
Boca Raton is 86.16 percent White and 4.53 percent African American.
Official Numbers From The School Survey
By the numbers: 55.8 percent of those surveyed in South Palm Beach County want school opened in full (all in person, no distance learning). Just 31.3 percent of those in the Glades want school opened in full.
By race: 66.1 percent of white respondents want school opened in full (all in person, no distance learning).. Just 39.6 recent of Black respondents and 45.6 percent of Hispanic respondents want school opened in full.
In another metric: 65.2 precent of Black respondents want distance learning only, 56.8 percent of Hispanic respondents want only distance learning, and 41.4 percent of white respondents want only distance learning.
The School Board “working” session started with an audio recording of several phone messages — most were in favor of either delaying the school year until after Labor Day, or starting — as expected — on August 10th with distance learning only.
Notably, however, several parents said the school district needs to refine its distance learning plans. As we’ve reported repeatedly, many teachers rose to the occasion and embraced distance learning in the spring, but some were unmitigated disasters — confirmed by comments made by school officials. While a majority of teachers presented dynamic lessons and interacted with their students throughout the day, some, according to school officials, vanished for the week after assigning work on Monday.
Read the survey by downloading it, below. We note — as school officials did — that most of these surveys were completed before the current dramatic increase in Florida COVID-19 cases.
An official plan is expected on July 15th.
