On Tuesday, Feb. 16, Gibbie Harris, director of the Mecklenburg County Health Department, issued an order of abatement of imminent hazard for the North End Encampment at and around North Tryon and North 12th Sts. and for the area near Uptown Charlotte to be cleared by 5 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 19, citi
Oakdale Elementary students returned to in-person classes for the second time in mid-February.
In the first semester of last school year, 3% of Oakdale Elementary School’s third-graders got a D or F in reading. That was before the pandemic.
This year, with a fluctuating mix of remote and in-person classes, 69% of Oakdale’s third-graders fell below a C.
That’s one of the more extreme swings, but data on classroom grades provided by Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools shows many schools have taken dramatic hits on measures of academic performance during the pandemic. Almost always, they’re schools like Oakdale in north Charlotte, a high-poverty neighborhood school where more than 80% of students are Black or Hispanic.
Volunteers from the Black Child Development Institute hand out reading material and Reading Checkup information to families.
When COVID-19 forced schools to close almost a year ago, dozens of Mecklenburg County community groups came together to figure out how to help.
Now, with students returning to classrooms, they re still working together. Munro Richardson of Read Charlotte, a group that supports early literacy, said today s environment poses new challenges and opportunities.
Munro Richardson, executive director of Read Charlotte
Groups that normally offer summer learning programs are still trying to figure out whether in-person programs will be allowed, whether Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools will host programs at schools and how private groups efforts will mesh with the prospect of a state-mandated summer school program. Richardson said they ll need to get details locked in this month.
Munro Richardson, executive director of Read Charlotte If you look at 2019, which is the last year that we had third grade state test scores, 72% of white third-graders were reading at college and career ready, he said. But it was only 35% for Black third-graders and 29% for Hispanic third-graders.
Richardson, whose group works to build early reading skills, says there’s a risk that the pandemic could leave a lasting scar like a forest fire marking the rings of a growing tree. I’m worried about this negative tree ring, if you will, for our children of the pandemic, he said. And so it’s really up to us as adults to try to come together and both identify where our kids are at and do our best work to get them the support, but it’s going to take all of us.