Messenger: Pandemic highlights disparities in technology in schools; report suggests fixes | Tony Messenger

It was early in the pandemic, and the old one, provided by St. Louis Public Schools, had become damaged. The district wanted a $320 deposit before Nelson’s son could get a new device.

Nelson is a nurse practitioner. She has lived in St. Louis all her life. With four school-age children, coming up with several hundred dollars for a piece of technology her child needed for school was no simple affair.

“The process to get a new device was confusing and infuriating to say the least,” Nelson says. “Thankfully after persistence he received a new device but other students in the district have not been as fortunate.”

At the time, Nelson was a client of Legal Services of Eastern Missouri, a nonprofit that helps people living in poverty with various legal needs. During the pandemic, helping families gain access to technology so children didn’t fall behind during virtual learning became an unexpected focus of some of the lawyers there.

“Initially, we heard from families who just didn’t have the technology,” says Hopey Fink, a staff attorney with the nonprofit’s Education Justice Program. “As the pandemic went on we began to hear from families who perhaps initially had a device but then were charged a fine when they lost a device or had one damaged. And so the students just went without.”

What Fink and her colleagues found was that various school districts had wide-ranging policies on how to make sure students had access to technology. They began advocating with districts and with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education for policies that would waive fines and fees for those who can’t afford them.

The efforts led to the publication of a white paper earlier this year that advocates for using American Rescue Plan funding and other sources to wipe out fines and fees for those who lost or damaged take-home technology; and for developing consistent policies that ensure that low-income students aren’t left behind in the future.

“The children who have suffered most during the pandemic are the ones who were already marginalized by society,” wrote the authors. “In the midst of dealing with so many new questions and concerns, most school districts have avoided taking the steps necessary to make technology access truly equitable.”

Fink and her colleagues examined practices in St. Louis Public Schools, at KIPP charter schools, at Ritenour, Rockwood, Riverview Gardens, Union, University City, Webster Groves and East St. Louis school districts. What they found were a patchwork of disparate policies, but most involved some cost, deposits or fines for lost or damaged equipment.

The lack of access to technology was exacerbated for those students who live in areas with poor Internet service at home. Around the same time legal services was publishing its white paper on access to technology, another nonprofit, the Center for Civic Research and Innovation, published its own work, the St. Louis Digital Divide. That report says there are between 250,000 and 300,000 households in St. Louis city and county combined that lack access to high-quality internet.

“These technology equity issues have existed for a long time, but the pandemic sure pushed it into the forefront,” Fink says. “Districts are in different positions in part because of existing disparities in funding. But the issues we’re seeing are happening in a lot of districts.”

Fink hopes the legal services report will serve as a rallying cry — in some ways like the ArchCity Defenders' white paper on municipal court abuses in St. Louis County did in 2014. That report highlighted the high costs of using the municipal courts and police departments as fundraising tools for cities with cash-strapped budgets. While schools aren’t looking to make money on the various costs they pass on to students and their parents to access technology, for families living in poverty, the results can be similarly devastating.

“There’s this reckoning that seems to be taking place where people understand that fines can be a barrier for poor people,” Fink says.

Students fall behind, they have barriers to graduation, and families spend money on education that could go to food, rent or health care. 

“Children should not have any aspect of their education denied due to lack of a parent's ability to pay for a new device,” Nelson says. “It is the responsibility of the adults, including those at the forefront of their education, to set them up for success.”