Bridge prepares refugee students for school amid a pandemic
Sunday, August 2nd, 2020
Back-to-school isn’t an easy process for anyone in a pandemic—for refugees, it’s a monumental challenge.
As students across East Tennessee prepare to go back to school, case managers at Bridge Refugee Services have scrambled to communicate time-sensitive information to clients while strategizing ways to serve those with school-aged children during the upcoming, unprecedented school year.
“Refugees, especially our newer arrivals, need our help more than ever to navigate the system…to make sure none of those students fall through the cracks,” said Jennifer Croxall, case manager and school liaison for Bridge’s Chattanooga office.
Over the past two years, Bridge has helped enroll nearly 100 children in Knox County schools and 43 in Hamilton County schools, according to Jennifer and Amanda Parker, school liaison for Bridge’s Knoxville office.
Because Bridge offers assistance to any refugee or asylee family who has arrived within the last five years, the number of children who could potentially seek Bridge’s help this school year is much higher, they said, especially when considering students enrolled in previous years who are still in school and children who were too young to attend school at the time of arrival or were born soon after arrival and have since enrolled.
“There are new things every day coming out about how this is going to work, and it really is incumbent on the district to make sure every family stays up-to-date to understand,” Amanda said.
The women have been busy informing clients about their respective school district’s plans for reopening. Hamilton County is slated to begin Aug. 12, while Knox County plans to open school Aug. 17.
“Right now, we’re just having to do a lot of three-way calls to our clients with interpreters,” Jennifer said. “We have a good partnership with the English for Speakers of Other Languages director at the Hamilton County Schools central office. He reached out to me (in early July) and just wanted to personally make sure our clients who don’t speak English, Spanish or Arabic … understood all the different options.”
Hamilton County’s reopening plan consists of four phases with decisions being made about whether to open or close schools, or implement a hybrid of on-campus and remote learning, based on the number of active COVID-19 cases at any given time in the community.
Knox County Schools gave parents a week to pick between virtual learning and in-person learning options for the first semester of the school year, although individual schools can move to an all-virtual platform throughout the semester if it’s deemed safer to close the school.
“It typically takes weeks to make sure we can get things translated through volunteers or contracted services,” Amanda said.
So she said it has been a “huge challenge” to communicate the plan to her clients in such a short time-frame. She enlisted the help of interpreters, the Knox County Schools Welcome Center, which provides services to non-English-speaking students, and community partners to make sure clients understood their choices by the July 22 deadline.
“Flyers were created in five languages (Swahili, Kirundi, Chinese, Spanish, Arabic), and then I also conducted interpreted meetings in Kinyarwanda,” Amanda said. “We had a video in Spanish that Centro Hispano (a non-profit that serves the Knoxville Latino community) created and a Kirundi audio message that Knoxville Internationals Network created.”
She then set up meetings with each family enrolled in Bridge’s Refugee School Impact Grant program to answer questions.
“It took time to schedule those,” she said. “The parents really had one or two days once they had that information to make the decision.”
All of those parents opted to send their children back to school in person, often over concerns about losing their jobs or having unreliable childcare to support at-home online learning, she said.
“There’s also concern about the lack of psychosocial support integrating with other kids,” Amanda said.
Several refugees arrived in Chattanooga and Knoxville in February and March just in time for schools to shut down amid concerns about the coronavirus outbreak.
“All of those children normally would be having a great opportunity to learn English, make friends, adjust to the culture, and have a safe place to be learning those things and adapt more quickly,” Amanda said. “A lot of refugee children already experience so much interrupted learning. The pandemic caused a step backward to their development and adjusting to their new community.”
Jennifer said Bridge helped some of those students enroll in an academics-focused summer camp offered by Hamilton County Schools, and was able to set a high school student up with language learning software to get a jump-start on learning English over the summer.
Amanda also spent time in July helping clients register to receive the Chromebooks all Knoxville students will receive this year, as well as applying for free internet service the district is providing to those in need.
But she and Jennifer said there are still concerns about refugee students and their parents lacking proficient English and technology skills to be able to successfully navigate the virtual platforms.
Over the summer, Jennifer worked with interpreters to help clients complete online surveys seeking input about Hamilton County’s reopening plans. Others needed help navigating the district’s website and applying for the city’s discounted high-speed internet service program offered to students who qualify for free or reduced-fee lunches.
She also worked with the nonprofit, Tech Goes Home, to arrange for students to receive tablets, Chromebooks and hotspots to continue online learning from home when schools shut down.
“That company just reached out to us again (in mid-July) and said they would like to figure out some digital literacy courses parents could take and also give loaned tablets and Chromebooks to those families,” she said.
If the schools move to an all-virtual learning platform, the women said Bridge will continue to work with community partners to make sure their student clients have access to food services normally provided by the schools.
“We’ve been in constant conversation with other organizations, and they have definitely helped us figure out ways to navigate aid for those who have lost their job or had changes to their job to stay home with kids through the pandemic,” Amanda said.
In addition, Jennifer said Bridge is once again working with the Urban League of Greater Chattanooga’s Shoes for School program to provide a new pair of shoes and other school supplies to students aged 5 to 12.
“This year, they’re delivering the items to the agencies and we will deliver them to our clients,” she said.
Bridge is also exploring safe ways for its volunteers to provide tutoring and after-school help.
“I could see there being more of a need because of online learning,” Jennifer said.