ATLANTA (AP) \u2014 It\u2019s unclear to Tameka how \u2014 or even when \u2014 her children became unenrolled from Atlanta Public Schools. But it was traumatic when, in fall 2021, they figured out it had happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After more than a year of some form of pandemic online learning, students were all required to come back to school in person. Tameka was deeply afraid of COVID-19 and skeptical the schools could keep her kids safe from what she called \u201cthe corona.\u201d One morning, in a test run, she sent two kids to school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her oldest daughter, then in seventh grade, and her second youngest, a boy entering first grade, boarded their respective buses. She had yet to register the youngest girl, who was entering kindergarten<\/u><\/a>. And her older son, a boy with Down syndrome, stayed home because she wasn\u2019t sure he could consistently wear masks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After a few hours, the elementary school called: Come pick up your son, they told her. He was no longer enrolled, they said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a>Around lunchtime, the middle school called: Come get your daughter, they told her. She doesn\u2019t have a class schedule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a>Tameka\u2019s children \u2014 all four of them \u2014 have been home ever since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thousands of students<\/u><\/a> went missing from American classrooms during the pandemic. For some who have tried to return<\/u><\/a>, a serious problem has presented itself. A corrosive combination of onerous re-enrollment requirements, arcane paperwork and the everyday obstacles of poverty \u2014 a nonworking phone, a missing backpack, the loss of a car \u2014 is in many cases preventing those children from going back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOne of the biggest problems that we have is kids that are missing and chronic absenteeism<\/u><\/a>,\u201d says Pamela Herd, a Georgetown University public policy professor. She studies how burdensome paperwork and processes often prevent poor people from accessing health benefits. \u201cI\u2019m really taken aback that a district would set forth a series of policies that make it actually quite difficult to enroll your child.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Atlanta, where Tameka lives, parents must present at least eight documents<\/u><\/a> to enroll their children \u2014 twice as many as parents in New York City or Los Angeles. One of the documents \u2014 a complicated certificate evaluating a child\u2019s dental health, vision, hearing and nutrition \u2014 is required by the state. Most of the others are Atlanta\u2019s doing, including students\u2019 Social Security cards and an affidavit declaring residency that has to be notarized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The district asks for proof of residency for existing students every year at some schools,<\/u><\/a> and also before beginning sixth and ninth grades, to prevent students from attending schools outside of their neighborhoods or communities. The policy also allows the district to request proof the student still lives in the attendance zone after an extended absence or many tardy arrivals. Without that proof, families say their children have been disenrolled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey make it so damned hard,\u201d says Kimberly Dukes, an Atlanta parent who co-founded an organization to help families advocate for their children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During the pandemic, she and her children became homeless and moved in with her brother. She struggled to convince her children\u2019s school they really lived with him. Soon, she heard from other caregivers having similar problems. Last year, she estimates she helped 20 to 30 families re-enroll their children in Atlanta Public Schools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The school district pushed back against this characterization of the enrollment process. \u201cWhen parents inform APS that they are unable to provide updated proof of residence, protocols are in place to support families,\u201d Atlanta communications director Seth Coleman wrote by email. Homeless families are not required to provide documentation, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tameka\u2019s kids have essentially been out of school since COVID hit in March 2020. She and her kids have had a consistent place to live, but nearly everything else in their lives collapsed during the pandemic. (Tameka is her middle name. The Associated Press is withholding her full name because Tameka, 33, runs the risk of jail time or losing custody of her children since they are not in school.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tameka\u2019s longtime partner, who was father to her children, died of a heart attack in May 2020 as COVID gripped the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His death left her overwhelmed and penniless. Tameka never graduated from high school and has worked occasionally as a security guard or a housecleaner for hotels. She has never gotten a driver\u2019s license. But her partner worked construction and had a car. \u201cWhen he was around, we never went without,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Suddenly, she had four young children to care for by herself, with only government cash assistance to live on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Schools had closed to prevent the spread of the virus, and the kids were home with her all the time. Remote learning didn\u2019t hold their attention. Their home internet didn\u2019t support the three children being online simultaneously, and there wasn\u2019t enough space in their two-bedroom apartment for the kids to have a quiet place to learn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because she had to watch them, she couldn\u2019t work. The job losses put her family even further below the median income for a Black family in Atlanta \u2014 $28,105. (The median annual income for a white family in the city limits is $83,722.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n When Tameka\u2019s children didn\u2019t return to school, she also worried about the wrong kind of attention from the state\u2019s child welfare department. According to Tameka, staff visited her in spring 2021 after receiving calls from the school complaining her children were not attending online classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The social workers interviewed the children, inspected their home and looked for signs of neglect and abuse. They said they\u2019d be back to set her up with resources to help her with parenting. For more than two years, she says, \u201cthey never came back.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n When the kids missed 10 straight days of school that fall, the district removed them from its rolls, citing a state regulation. Tameka now had to re-enroll them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Suddenly, another tragedy of her partner\u2019s death became painfully obvious. He was carrying all the family\u2019s important documents in his backpack when he suffered his heart attack. The hospital that received him said it passed along the backpack and other possessions to another family member, Tameka says. But it was never found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The backpack contained the children\u2019s birth certificates and her own, plus Medicaid cards and Social Security cards. Slowly, she has tried to replace the missing documents. First, she got new birth certificates for the children, which required traveling downtown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After asking for new Medicaid cards for over a year, she finally received them for two of her children. She says she needs them to take her children to the doctor for the health verifications and immunizations required to enroll. It\u2019s possible her family\u2019s cards have been held up by a backlog in Georgia\u2019s Medicaid office since the state agency incorrectly disenrolled thousands of residents<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When she called for a doctor\u2019s appointment in October, the office said the soonest they could see her children was December.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat\u2019s too late,\u201d she said. \u201cHalf the school year will be over by then.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She also needs to show the school her own identification, Social Security cards, and a new lease, plus the notarized residency affidavit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She shakes her head. \u201cIt\u2019s a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some of the enrollment requirements have exceptions buried deep in school board documents. But Tameka says no one from the district has offered her guidance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Contact logs provided by the district show social workers from three schools have sent four emails and called the family 19 times since the pandemic closed classrooms in 2020. Most of those calls went to voicemail or didn\u2019t go through because the phone was disconnected. Records show Tameka rarely called back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The only face-to-face meeting was in October 2021, when Tameka sent her kids on the bus, only to learn they weren\u2019t enrolled. A school social worker summarized the encounter: \u201cDiscussed students\u2019 attendance history, the impact it has on the student and barriers. Per mom student lost father in May 2020 and only other barrier is uniforms.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The social worker said the school would take care of the uniforms. \u201cMom given enrollment paperwork,\u201d the entry ends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The school\u2019s logs don\u2019t record any further attempts to contact Tameka.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOur Student Services Team went above and beyond to help this family and these children,\u201d wrote Coleman, the district spokesperson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Inconsistent cell phone access isn\u2019t uncommon among low-income Americans. Many have phones, as Tameka\u2019s family does, but when they break or run out of prepaid minutes, communication with the phones becomes impossible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So in some cities, even at the height of the pandemic, social workers, teachers and administrators checked on families in person when they were unresponsive or children had gone missing from online learning. In Atlanta, Coleman said, the district avoided in-person contact because of the coronavirus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tameka says she\u2019s unaware of any outreach from Atlanta schools. She currently lacks a working phone with a cell plan, and she\u2019s spent long stretches over the last three years without one. An Associated Press reporter has had to visit the family in person to communicate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The logs provided by Atlanta Public Schools show only one attempt to visit the family in person, in spring 2021. A staff member went to the family\u2019s home to discuss poor attendance in online classes by the son with Down syndrome. No one was home, and the logs don\u2019t mention further attempts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The details of what the district has done to track down and re-enroll Tameka\u2019s children, especially her son with Down syndrome, matter. Federal laws require the state and district to identify, locate and evaluate all children with disabilities until they turn 21.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One government agency has been able to reach Tameka. A new social worker from the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services, the same agency that came years earlier, made another visit to her home in October.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The department offered to organize a ride for her and her children to visit the doctor. But without an appointment, Tameka didn\u2019t see the point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The social worker also shared a helpful tip: Tameka can enroll her children with most of the paperwork, and then she would have 30 days to get the immunizations. But she should act fast, the social worker urged, or the department might have to take action against her for \u201ceducational neglect.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n To many observers, Tameka\u2019s troubles stem from Atlanta\u2019s rapid gentrification. The city, known for its Black professional class, also boasts the country\u2019s largest wealth disparity between Black and white families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt looks good from the curb, but when you get inside you see that Black and brown people are worse off economically than in West Virginia \u2014 and no one wants to talk about it,\u201d says Frank Brown, who heads Communities in Schools of Atlanta, an organization that runs dropout-prevention programs in Atlanta Public Schools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Atlanta\u2019s school board passed many of its enrollment policies and procedures back in 2008, after years of gentrification and a building boom consolidated upper-income and mostly white residents in the northern half of the city. The schools in those neighborhoods complained of \u201covercrowding,\u201d while the schools in the majority Black southern half of the city couldn\u2019t fill all of their seats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The board cracked down on \u201cresidency fraud\u201d to prevent parents living in other parts of town from sending their children to schools located in those neighborhoods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis was about balancing the number of students in schools,\u201d says Tiffany Fick, director of school quality and advocacy for Equity in Education, a policy organization in Atlanta. \u201cBut it was also about race and class.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Communities such as St. Louis<\/u><\/a>, the Massachusetts town of Everett and Tupelo, Mississippi<\/u><\/a>, have adopted similar policies, including tip lines to report neighbors who might be sending their children to schools outside of their enrollment zones.<\/p>\n\n\n\nPARENTS MUST PROVE RESIDENCY, REPEATEDLY<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
ECHOES OF A PARTNER\u2019S DEATH<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
CALLS FROM THE SCHOOL \u2014 TO A DISCONNECTED PHONE<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
RESIDENCY CRACKDOWN WORKS AGAINST PARENTS<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n