‘Hell Week’: NYC Students Battle Wi-Fi As Learning Goes Online

NEW YORK CITY — Iris Gomez doesn’t worry about how she’ll convince her rambunctious 7-year-old twins to spend the day in front of laptops, care for her 2-year-old toddler and complete her own school and freelance work at the same time.

And the single Brooklyn mom doesn’t worry about her sons’ teachers — who must now try to reach a horde of second-graders through an array of pixelated screens — while balancing their babies on their laps.

Gomez worries about her neighbors.

"People have to choose between diapers and food," Gomez said. “What a hell week."

Gomez is among the many New York City parents who saw their 1.1 million children summoned home two weeks ago as the New York City Department of Education rushed to re-create its 1,700-school system online.

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One week after the DOE’s remote learning portal launched, teachers and parents report a harrowing and frustrating experience that leaves the city’s most vulnerable kids without access to an education that should be their right.

Or, as Gomez put it, "All things are going to pot."

Gomez, who makes her living as a freelance web developer while studying at the CUNY School of Professional Studies, described a hectic week of trying to keep her two boys focused on their computers for five hours straight.

Dean and Samuel, both second-graders at Brooklyn Gardens Elementary School in East New York, rely on Individualized Education Programs for students with special learning needs that they must now go without.

Gomez worries how they’ll fare on next year’s placement tests after months of battling the distractions of home and frequent technological glitches, which include PDFs that won't open and YouTube videos that won't play.

“I have to sit there between 9 and 2," Gomez said, "and make sure my baby isn’t climbing to the top of the bunkbed.”

But Gomez considers herself lucky because she understands computers and has a spare one to give the boys. Her neighbor is not so lucky.

The family next door — a mom, her boyfriend and three kids — must all share one room that doesn't have enough outlets to keep their devices charged.

And because that room isn't connected to the internet, school comes to a screeching halt whenever a call comes in. The kids still haven't been able to figure out how to submit photos of their completed homework.

“It’s getting f---ing rough," Gomez told Patch over the phone on Friday. “She’s struggling.”

Gomez's neighbor is not alone, city data shows.

Nearly 2.2 million New York City dwellers don’t have broadband internet access at home, according to a comptroller’s Office report released earlier this year.

Of the roughly 917,000 New York City homes without broadband, 352,000 rely on cell phone data plans to connect their devices to the internet, the study found.

About 30 percent of Hispanic and black New Yorkers lack broadband internet access, compared with 20 percent of white New Yorkers and 22 percent of Asian residents, according to the analysis.

Internet access is about to become an equity issue across the nation as about 104,000 school closures sent 47.9 million students home amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Roughly 3 million American homes aren't wired for broadband, according to National Telecommunications and Information Administration data. And broadband adoption rates in black households are 6.8 percent lower than in white households, and Latino households lag behind 3.4 percent, Brookings Institute data shows.

While 82 percent of white families in the U.S. say they own a computer, only 58 percent of black families and 57 percent of Hispanic families can say the same, a Pew Research Center study shows.

“Our own research shows that as neighborhood poverty rises, the broadband adoption rate falls precipitously,” the Brooking Institute report says.

“As COVID-19 requires more schools to transition to online learning, the students who were already the most vulnerable to falling behind will face even more hurdles to keep pace.”

Dr Jeanie Tse, a psychiatrist specializing in childhood issues at the Institute for Community Living in Brooklyn, told Patch she worries for children with special needs and in low-income communities.

She urged their parents to do exactly what Gomez’s neighbor has done.

“This is when you need your community,” Tse said. “Reach out to friends and neighbors."

Among Tse’s greatest concerns are for students with parents without U.S. citizenship who may fear logging in to a government website such as the Department of Education’s.

“This is going to be extremely difficult,” she said. "You may need to pull out all the stops.”

Tse’s prediction has already come to fruition, according to Medgar Evers College professor Deborah Greenblatt.

Greenblatt, who specializes in multicultural early childhood education, says teachers from across the city have left frantic messages in her inbox trying to figure out how to connect to students.

“The families might not be signing up for certain things if they're undocumented citizens,” Greenblatt tells them. “There's fear of a footstep that could be followed.”

The teachers report students sharing a single computer with a household of people who must all work and learn remotely, students who relied on now-shuttered public spaces to connect to the internet, and parents unable to sign up for internet because of outstanding bills.

“That really pisses me off, to tell you the truth,” Greenblatt said. “The kids are not in a place emotionally to deal with this. It's chaotic.”

Greenblatt also worries about her older kids, who won’t go to prom, meet in the library with their friends or explore the newfound independence of a college student.

Already, one student has admitted Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s stay-at-home order has left her trapped with an abusive partner.

“She's shut in with her perpetrator,” Greenblatt said, noting the student said of the Medgar Evers campus library, “This is my respite.”

Greenblatt said she’s encouraging students and teachers alike to lean into the difficulties and choose honesty over the appearance of perfection.

She discourages teachers from dressing up their homes for e-learning time, so that students feel comfortable talking about their own situations.

This worked for one teacher, who told Greenblatt a student tilted his laptop back to show a gaping hole in the roof.

“Our job first has always been the social and emotional well-being of our students,” said Greenblatt. “If that's not there, kids can't learn.”

While Gomez touts her technology knowledge as the reason she's prepared to face the challenges ahead, it might also be her sense of humor that gets her family through.

During her phone interview with Patch, Gomez often ducked away from the phone to issue directives that never came without a joke.

"People don’t go around biting other people unless they’re vampires," Gomez called across the room. Later: "We’re all heroes!”

First laughter ensued, then quiet.

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