“Have you ever heard of ‘King Henry Doesn’t Usually Drink Chocolate Milk?’” he asked.

It’s a mnemonic device Malik, 10, had just learned to help him remember metric system measurements — kilo, hecto, deca, base unit, deci, centi, mili. He’s a student at Langley Elementary School in Eckington. His mother, Annie Wright, is the Langley Parent Teacher Organization president.

Wright has frequent conversations with parents and school administrators about if and how Langley Elementary would reopen. Langley is a Title 1 school. It was one of several facilities to undergo HVAC renovations, not to mention an ongoing bathroom renovation project. Wright doesn’t point out those projects to criticize Langley Elementary administration. She said they are working hard to eventually open classrooms.

But it’s still unclear when Langley students, along with other D.C. students, will return to their classrooms. After announcing that 7,000 of D.C.’s roughly 30,000 elementary school students would return to classes on Nov. 9, the District was forced to keep classrooms closed after members of the Washington Teachers’ Union organized a sick-in.

According to reporting , enough teachers called in sick Nov. 2 to necessitate the cancellation of online classes. The District abandoned plans to reopen some schools the same day.

DCPS will not open elementary schools on November 9 as planned. We have heard feedback from many in our community about plans, and we will use this moment to adjust our timeline and staffing plans for reopening. Read more:

— Chancellor Ferebee (@DCPSChancellor)

Washington Teachers’ Union Spokesman Joe Weedon said his organization wants to see more transparent data on building repairs and student interest in in-person classes in addition to more earnest engagement with parents and teachers before schools reopen their doors.

“There has been a lack of data,” Weedon said. “There is a lot of frustration on both sides but especially from the teachers at this point.”

opened on Nov. 18. CARES classrooms allow students to continue virtual classes onsite and under the supervision of school staff. Wright said she understands the importance of the CARES classrooms. She is able to work from home and her sister often comes over to help Malik with technical issues. Wright said she knows not everyone’s situation is like hers. But Langley hasn’t opened a CARES class, yet.

“Langley still needs work,” Wright said. She was among the parents able to tour the building’s recent projects. “I feel like the administration is working to at least prepare for CARES classes.”

Malik is somewhat aware of the tensions and hurdles associated with reopening classrooms. His mother is the PTO president, after all, so he hears the discussions about facility upgrades and teacher safety.

But on a daily basis, he just busies himself with the business of learning, like trying to remember what “King Henry Doesn’t Usually Drink Chocolate Milk” stands for.

Settled in

I wanted to talk to Malik because after covering the possibility of a limited reopening at Langley in late October, I realized I hadn’t asked any Langley students about how they would feel going back to school.

Malik is not representative of all students. He’s just one fifth grader who wakes up, eats the breakfast his mom makes for him, usually breakfast sausage and muffins. He might watch a couple videos on YouTube and then logs onto his Microsoft Teams account at 8:45 a.m. for class.

His mother is able to work from home and his aunt is able to come over frequently and help with virtual learning. Malik said he knows not all students are in the same situation he is. Some have parents who work a lot, he said or at higher risk. It’s why, he said, he knew he wouldn’t be going back to school even before the District abandoned the plan.

But, even then, he didn’t mind the prospect of learning from his room for the rest of the school year if necessary. He still doesn’t mind that possibility.

“It feels safe,” he said. “It feels awesome, because you get to stay in your pajamas all day and be like ‘This is me. You got me.’”

Malik wasn’t always this comfortable with online learning. When schools first closed in March, he struggled to adjust.

“I feel like with my son, it (was) a lot of hand holding with him being at home,” Wright said in an earlier interview. “In the beginning I always plead the case that if you were in school, I would not be here holding your hand.”

But he hit his stride. Now, he said, he feels independent in his learn-from-home environment.

“I do feel more mature,” Malik said. “I have to stay here. I have no supervision. I have to make sure I have tunnel vision.”

That’s not to say that Malik doesn’t miss his friends. He misses recess and lunch hours – times that used to be social, but now he spends alone. At Langley, he said he and his friends made a Ghost Keepers group based on a mystery book they all liked called The Ghostkeepers Journal and Field Guide.

He also said he gets stressed sometimes. The long hours staring at a screen are hard for him, but when he does get stressed, he said he draws. He’s gotten better at drawing faces since the pandemic started. Noses used to be hard for him, but he’s starting to get the hang of drawing them.

I would love for him to go back, but I really don’t think that he is going to make it back in that building anymore.

In the weeks since D.C. Public Schools abandoned its plan to return some students to school, Wright is considering what the second half of the school year will look like for her son. She said she thinks Malik will finish out the school year learning from home, which is emotional to consider. Malik is a fifth grader, meaning this is his last year at Langley. Usually there is a graduation ceremony, but that, like so many other milestones, may be virtual this year.

“I think Antonio’s last day at Langley was March 15, 2020,” Wright said. “I would love for him to go back, but I really don’t think that he is going to make it back in that building anymore.”

It’s a reality many D.C. parents are considering as another round of end-of-school milestones inch nearer. DCPS is floating another plan to reopen during the January 2021 semester, but Weedon said there still needs to be more meaningful parent and teacher engagement before the Washington Teachers’ Union will sign off on any in-person learning plan.

“Whether it’s continuing to roll out the plan [DCPS] had previously developed is unclear,” Weedon said. “They are trying to engage a new school based committee … but there are no details in what they are looking for.”

There is still no knowing how and if a new plan to reopen schools will manifest. When asked how he feels about the possibility of finishing the school year virtually, or even beginning the next one from home, Malik was direct.

“Shoot, I wouldn’t mind,” he said. “I would keep in my real comfy clothes.”

The post In Eckington, pajamas are the school uniform for the foreseeable future first appeared on 91ÇŃ×Ó.

At 21, he got to manage a political campaign.

After going home to Merrimac, Massachusetts, when GW initially closed its campus in March, Olds said he was scrambling to find work. He had an internship lined up, but that fell through. So, on a whim, he sent a message to his state representative, Lenny Mirra.

Olds accepted the position of campaign manager on Mirra’s reelection campaign in June. Six months later, he and Mirra celebrated a successful reelection bid.

Olds, a member of the GW College Republicans, said if he had been on campus this fall, he likely would have volunteered on a campaign, but he wouldn’t have been able to secure a management position.

Fellow GW College Republicans member Patrick Burland agrees. At 21, Burland also led a state legislature campaign for a candidate near Burland’s hometown of Woodbridge, Connecticut.

He said he scheduled campaign meetings around his class schedule, something that would make those he was working with chuckle. That said, the flexibility of online classes and GW’s decision to cancel classes on Election Day gave Burland more time to focus on his campaign work.

“It was extremely personally beneficial,” Burland said. “Obviously I developed more relationships in the area and I got a really hands-on experience at a really interesting time.”

Although Burland’s candidate, Mike Southworth, didn’t win his bid to represent Connecticut’s 14th District in the state senate, he said the experience was extremely beneficial and likely one he wouldn’t have gotten if he had been on campus this fall.

“If I was at school for GW I would have probably been helping out with some of the campaigns in Virginia or in Maryland,” Burland said.

A younger campaign

According to , three times as many young people volunteered for a political campaign during the 2020 election cycle than the 2018 midterm election.

The survey lists a range of reasons for that uptick – increased activity around social issues and the presidential race chief among them – but for students like Olds and Burland, geography was a primary contributor.

As for two other GW students, Cordelia Scales and Melanie Campbell, their proximity to their home districts this semester allowed them to volunteer at local poll stations.

Campbell, a Pittsburg resident, worked at a poll station around the corner from the grocery store where she works. She helped sign in her coworkers to vote and worked with another student who was also home due to campus closures.

“I’m really happy I got to do it,” Campbell said. “I would definitely do it again if I had the chance.”

Scales counted absentee ballots and registered voters in her hometown of Brookline, New Hampshire. She said she helped register over 250 voters and counted nearly 900 absentee ballots.

After a decrease in election workers during the primary elections in the spring caused fewer numbers of polling locations and longer lines, local and national leaders put out a call for a younger cadre of election volunteers. And, for the most part, young people responded.

“I know in my town most of the polls workers are aged 65 and up so they are at a significantly higher risk for the virus,” Scales said. “There is no early voting in New Hampshire, so it’s always lots of people. So, I wanted to keep them safe.”

A local perspective

Working on a local campaign during a divisive election wasn’t always easy, nor was volunteering to work at polling locations during a pandemic.

Campbell said she was nervous voters wouldn’t respect the regulations local election officials had adopted. Meanwhile, Burland said he had to have sometimes tough conversations with voters who were also his friends and neighbors.

But both said that’s what made the experience important.

“You’re more invested in it because you can kind of measure the impact that things you do have on your community,” Burland said.

Many also noted how different their communities are than the environment they would have been exposed to in D.C.

“It was a different atmosphere in D.C.,” Campbell said. “Pennsylvania was obviously super polarized and divided.”
Olds said one of the primary benefits of the experience was getting to see the election from outside what he called the hyper-engaged D.C. bubble.

“D.C. is very unrepresentative of the rest of the country,” Olds said. “And learning to be a political scientist when living in the D.C. bubble can lead to drawing wrong conclusions about what Americans are actually thinking.”

Going forward, all four students said they would like to stay engaged with politics, both local and national. Scales and Campbell are both members of GW’s College Democrats. Campbell leads the organization’s progressive caucus.

As for Olds and Burland, they hope their sometimes differing perspectives, especially on race and climate change, are heard by older members of their party.

“We were the ones sometimes who stepped up, working the polls to make sure that elections worked smoothly,” Burland said. “We were the ones on the ground … and we have concerns that not all Republicans share.”

The post Virtual classes give GW students chance to participate in local elections first appeared on 91ÇŃ×Ó.

“284! 284!” she said, which is the number of electoral votes president-elect Joe Biden had won when the Associated Press called the race in his favor late Saturday morning.

Over 90% of D.C. voters cast their ballots for Biden, according the Washington D.C. Board of Elections. 91ÇŃ×Ó 5% voted for President Trump. Biden’s proportion of the vote was slightly smaller in Ward 2 and Ward 3, which include Georgetown, where the president-elect picked up about 89% of the vote in each ward.

As the news spread, honks could be heard echoing from M street, where pedestrians and passing drivers simultaneously celebrated the results.

A man driving a car with a Joe Biden bumper sticker on the back cheerfully honked while driving up 35th Street.

A few blocks over near the intersection of 37th Street NW and Whitehaven Parkway NW, someone had written “Biden,” “safety at last” and “we won” in blue sidewalk chalk in front of their home. A prayer candle with a photo of president-elect Biden and a figurine of the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had been placed on the front steps leading to their walkway. The words “Biden Won” were written underneath in the same blue chalk.

Meanwhile, similar celebrations took place all over the United States. that spontaneous cheers broke out around the city when the news broke. Similar scenes where since Friday when president-elect Biden took the lead in Pennsylvania.

Back in D.C., a group of about 20 residents had gathered at the intersection of Calvert Street NW and Wisconsin Avenue around 1 p.m., cheering to the sound of car horns and wooden spoons on pots and pans.

Natalie Davis stood on the corner with her husband and three children. They were at a birthday party in another D.C. park when the AP called the race for Biden. Davis said a woman drove by in a minivan screaming that Kamala Harris was now the vice president. The entire party erupted in cheers, she said.

After driving home and grabbing some kitchen pans and spoons, the five of them stood on the corner of Calvert and Wisconsin celebrating with the passing traffic.

Davis said the four days since the election have been tense. She said her family were “holding our breath.”

“(It was) also really disappointing at first, thinking people were okay with everything staying the same,” Davis said.

Votes cast the day of the election were counted first in many states, giving President Trump a perceived lead election night. That lead began to shrink in the days that followed as states like Pennsylvania and Georgia began counting mail-in and absentee ballots cast prior to Nov. 2.

“It’s just a sense of relief,” Davis said.

Kenza Coulibaly, Geneva Jacobs and Keyla Sejas all stood on the same corner. They were on a Metro bus when they heard the news. When the celebrations started, they decided to join in.

All three of the girls are too young to vote, but Coulibaly said her mother voted for president-elect Biden – her mother’s first vote as a U.S. citizen.

But watching this election as minors hasn’t been easy, they said. Coulibaly said she talked to her family, encouraging them to vote this year. Sejas said she phone banked, but mostly they said it felt like the results of this election were in other people’s hands.

“It felt really anxious because you didn’t know who voted for who and you can’t do anything about it,” Coulibaly said.

As of 5 p.m. Saturday, President Trump had yet to concede the election. In a statement earlier that day, he had promised additional legal challenges to the results of the election. Since Tuesday, the Trump campaign and its surrogates have launched a series of lawsuits challenging vote counting procedures in Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia.

Judges have been skeptical of Republican’s arguments, however. A judge denied a request to stop counting votes in Clark County, Nevada, until ballot signatures could be checked by hand as opposed to a computer software Friday evening. The Trump campaign is not a party on that lawsuit, but touted it earlier this week.

Georgetown residents’ spirits weren’t dampened by the possibility of future litigation. Sejas said she would keep celebrating, at least until her voice gave out.

The post From the waterfront to Calvert Street, Georgetown reacts to a Biden win first appeared on 91ÇŃ×Ó.

She said she was mostly interested in the presidential race. But she was also interested in D.C. Councilmember Brooke Pinto.

Pinto held onto her seat on the D.C. Council on Tuesday, winning about 68% of the vote. Her closest challenger was Randy Downs, a two-time ANC commissioner who has represented Q Street down to Pennsylvania Avenue since 2017. He earned 20% of the vote. Independent Martin Miguel Fernandez captured about 7% of votes and Green Party candidate Peter Bolton finished with 3%.

Outside the School Without Walls at Francis Stevens, where Aguiniga cast her ballot, Pinto said a win for her would mean that voters are happy with the representation they have received so far. Pinto was elected to the D.C. Council in June after winning a crowded Democratic primary earlier that month. That was after she previously won a special election in June to fill the seat vacated by Jack Evans, who resigned from the council in January amid an ethics scandal.

She is both the youngest member of the D.C. Council and the first woman for Ward 2. She’s run three campaigns this year. All of them during a pandemic.

“We didn’t do any door-to-door knocking to keep the safety of my team and the safety of our residents first and foremost,” Pinto said.

Instead, she made phone calls. During her primary campaign she said she consistently made 500 phone calls a day. Pinto said she wasn’t able to maintain that clip while performing her council duties, but continued to make calls on nights and weekends.

“It is all about connection with voters,” she said.

As for Downs, he emphasized his work in the community during the 10 years he’s been a resident of the District. He’s served two terms as an ANC commissioner and is an active member of D.C.’s LGBTQ community. Speaking before election results were tallied, Downs said he plans to continue to be involved in Ward 2 issues.

“Ward 2 is my home,” Downs said. “I have been here a decade and have been incredibly involved. I’m not going anywhere.”

Pinto was often cast as an outsider throughout the campaign. Pinto is from Connecticut and came to the District to attend Georgetown University Law School. After she graduated, she worked as an assistant D.C. attorney general.

Pinto, however, rejected that characterization.

“I moved here for law school, have been here ever since and will be here the rest of my life,” Pinto said.

Aguiniga said Pinto’s time in the District didn’t factor into her decision to cast her vote in the incumbent’s favor. Aguiniga said she, herself, is from Maryland.

“It’s a city of people who are new to the city,” Aguiniga said. We support people who want to make the city a great place and keep it a great place.”

In terms of priorities for her first full term in office, Pinto said they will be much the same as those she has had since she was elected – COVID-19 recovery for D.C. businesses, criminal justice reform and affordable housing.

“A win tonight,” she said about two hours before polls closed, “means that I should continue my laser focus.”

The post Pinto retains Ward 2 council seat first appeared on 91ÇŃ×Ó.

Polling place manager Egypt Jones said early and absentee voting but into Election Day crowds. Jones said almost 3,000 people have cast their ballot at the polling location in the last week.

Some Ward 2 residents, however, like Sara Aguiniga, were still casting their vote even as polls neared close. Aguiniga said she had intended to vote absentee, but her ballot never arrived.
“Thankfully the voting process was seamless,” Aguiniga said.

D.C. doesn’t require photo ID to vote, meaning Aguiniga just had to give her first and last name and address. Jones said that’s what has made the process so smooth, even for last minute voters like Aguiniga.

“It hasn’t taken anyone more than five minutes,” Jones said.

Regarding the national races, Aguiniga said she voted for Joe Biden for president. Locally, she voted to reelect D.C. Councilmember Brooke Pinto for the Ward 2 council seat. Aguiniga said she was excited to see Pinto at the polling place doing some last-minute campaigning.

“I like that she is a younger woman,” Aguiniga said. “I appreciate her concern for the city.”

The post Voters trickle into Ward 2 precinct in last hours of voting first appeared on 91ÇŃ×Ó.

He doesn’t have official statistics yet, but he said it’s obvious D.C. residents have responded to the national and local calls for poll workers. A lot of them. And many of them are distinctly younger than the average poll worker during past elections.

D.C. usually needs about 3,000 people to work the polls, plus about 2,000 alternates, he said. This year, the board hit that quota easily. Bennett said there are about 2,000 extra applications he hasn’t even sifted through.

And he estimates about 75% to 80% of those workers are between 20 and 45 years old. In previous years, that age group made up the minority of election volunteers with seniors accounting for the majority.

“Young people have really, really come out in force,” Bennett said. “We haven’t done any stats on the demographics, but it’s obvious.”

Some of those young people, Bennett said, are high schoolers, too young to even vote.

But D.C. area high schoolers aren’t just volunteering to work the polls. They are helping to recruit young people in places like Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. and Polk County, Florida. where young people haven’t turned out in the same numbers.

“People are literally voting for our future”

Anne Moser goes to Richard Montgomery High School in Rockville, Maryland.

Like other 10th graders, she logs onto her virtual classes at around 9 a.m., but between lessons she sneaks in texts and emails to election officials and teachers in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania.

At 15, she’s too young to be a poll worker herself – something she admits with obvious disappointment – but she’s trying to connect young people in the Allentown area with resources to volunteer themselves.

Moser works with Youth Activism Project, a D.C.-based organization that encourages teenagers to become activists in their communities, even before they are able to vote.

The organization was founded in 2004 by Wendy Schaetzel Lesko with a global campaign for educational equity equity for girls. A recent project focused on registering every eligible high school student in Montgomery County to vote.

That project concluded about a week ago. That’s when the Youth Activism Project turned to its attention to recruiting poll workers.

“It seemed like the biggest needs were filling these gaps in terms of poll workers,” Anika Manzoor, executive director of the Youth Activism Project, said. “Poll workers play an underappreciated role in protecting our democracy and I think people don’t realize that.”

Moser spends about two hours a day making calls and sending emails. So far, she said, she’s helped recruit three or four young people to volunteer.

“People are literally voting for our future, and even if you can’t vote or you’re voting for the first time, it’s still important to get involved,” Moser said.

The long shift

Ilana LeVine, another Youth Activism Project worker, was signed up to be a poll worker herself for the primary election, but the COVID-19 pandemic made her parents wary. Like the others she’s working remotely and nationally; she’s recruiting youth poll workers in Polk County, Florida.

Polk County Supervisor of Elections Lori Edwards said there are 1,700 people signed up to work at polling locations on Election Day. 91ÇŃ×Ó 1,500 are for polling locations and the rest are support staff, but she could always use more.

Alex Garcia, a 16-year-old Albert Einstein High School student, said, overall, he thinks as many as 60 young people nationwide have signed up to work the polls due to Youth Activism Project’s work.Garcia signed up to be a poll worker in February.

He said he doesn’t know if he is more excited or scared — he’s got more than one long day of work ahead of him. He’ll be working two half shifts during the early voting period and then from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Election Day.

Trending female

LeVine said she was somewhat civically active before the 2020 election cycle. She’d attended a couple protests like March for Our Lives and the Women’s March. But it’s been different since the spring.

“After George Floyd’s death, I guess I realized that it wasn’t right to stay silent,” LeVine said. “So much has happened since then. It definitely encouraged people to act out more.”

Moser said the same. She hadn’t been involved in anything she’d call activism before the death of George Floyd.
LeVine and Moser also have something else in common – they’re both young women.

The 19th*, a nonprofit publication that reports on gender and policy, reported that many of those stepping up to be election workers are women.

The trend, at least in Manzoor’s organization, holds. Of the 15 students working to recruit poll workers, 14 identify as female.

But Garcia said he sees the same trend in other organizations he’s involved with, not just Youth Activism Project. Among his male friends he said he’s the only one who has taken an interest in activism.

“They just brush things off,” he said. “A lot of people think they are activists if they repost something on Instagram, but they don’t actually like know how to make an impact or they don’t feel comfortable joining the environment in doing so.”

The post Young people aren’t just volunteering to be poll workers. They’re recruiting them. first appeared on 91ÇŃ×Ó.

Her son, Theodore, attends preschool at Langley Elementary School in Eckington. Each day he’s joined by another Langley Elementary preschooler. The same goes for Robbins’ daughter, Elena, a first grader, who is joined by two of her classmates.

Together, their five-student learning pod has fallen into a rhythm. The preschoolers finish around 11 a.m. and then do asynchronous activities while the three first graders continue until about 2 p.m. with a break for lunch and exercise.

“They have to wear masks all day,” Robbins said. “It’s good for them to practice those skills for when we do go back.”
Langley Elementary School, like all D.C. elementary schools, will welcome some students back Nov. 9.

Mayor Muriel Bowser announced Oct.5 that D.C. Public Schools would begin a phased reopening plan, beginning with the elementary schools, at the beginning of the second term.

Classrooms will be limited to 11 students and only one class will open per grade. Students will be given the option to return to the classroom on a lottery basis. If their child is chosen, parents have the option to stick with online learning or transition to in person. Classrooms for special education and supervised online learning are also slated to open.

Langley Elementary is also one of several D.C. schools undergoing an HVAC system upgrade. According to minutes from the Sept. 23 parent teacher organization meeting , there is also an ongoing bathroom project.

But, for Robbins and other Langley parents, the specifics are still murky.

Although Mayor Bowser tweeted an explainer video showing some details of the air filtration updates, Robbins also hasn’t heard any updates on what that looks like at Langley.

“You are kind of in this limbo,” Robbins said.

She doesn’t know if the projects will be complete in time for students to return, or if her children will be among the first to resume in-person classes.

A new, new normal

Robbins doesn’t think her children will be included in the first wave of students to return back to school. She’s paid for another month of pod learning and said she’s keeping an open mind about what comes next.

“I’m thankful that we’re able to navigate it,” Robbins said. Both she and her husband are able to work from home. “So, we are really lucky in that regard, but I can’t imagine the stress for people who aren’t.”

Robbins said she realizes the choice to go back to school isn’t really a choice for everyone. Parents whose jobs don’t allow for teleworking need their children in a safe learning environment. Meanwhile, other children – those who have or live with others who have pre-existing conditions – can’t return to school.

For those reasons Parent Teacher Organization president Annie Wright is glad DCPS is making returning to in-person learning optional.

Like Robbins, Wright counts herself lucky. Her sister has been able to help her fifth-grade son with technical issues while Wright works from home. But the transition to virtual learning wasn’t easy. It took a lot of hand holding, Wright said.

“So now that he is finally comfortable and there is rhythm it’s going to be difficult … to get him back into the school,” Wright said.

Wright said her son will likely stay with the virtual format. But even if students don’t return to the classroom, a transition is coming for many of the District’s elementary students. The smaller class sizes will mean reassigning teachers.

Right now, Wright’s son has four teachers he works with regularly. But two of those teachers will go back to onsite roles, leaving two online.

She said some parents are worried that since the children have become accustomed to their teachers, it will be difficult to transition to a new teacher

Joe Weedon, spokesman of the Washington Teachers’ Union, said the organization is also concerned about the effect that the transition from entirely virtually to partially in person will have on D.C. students.

“There is a huge concern on our part that we are going to disrupt the learning that is taking place and damage the social and emotional health of our students,” Weedon said.

Robbins said she’s taking deep breaths, but she has given some thought to what a partial transition looks like and how it will affect the learning routine.

“I think every transition for a child is a little bit traumatic.”

“I think every transition for a child is a little bit traumatic,” Robbins said. “How do you keep that education moving forward? That structure helps them learn.”

The next Langley PTO meeting is Oct. 21. Robbins and Wright said they are expecting more information not just about which students will be returning to the building, but the building itself.

Wait and see

Langley Elementary School is one of several facilities undergoing an HVAC system update.

COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, is primarily spread through close contact with someone who is carrying the live virus. However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its information on COVID-19 spread Oct. 5 to also account for airborne transmission.

Although it is much more likely to catch the virus due to close contact, there have been some documented cases where small particles became trapped in the air and infected people more than six feet away from the person positive for the virus. , this is more likely to occur in small, enclosed spaces.

Which is why Weedon said his organization is particularly interested in the HVAC project.

“Social distancing alone isn’t enough to protect our teachers and students if the air is stagnant, the aerosols, the particulates will linger,” Weedon said.

He said that by making sure there is circulating fresh air, it is less likely that there will be a risk of infection due to aerosolized particles.

Mayor Bowser tweeted a video Monday showing the types of air filters that are being installed in DCPS classrooms. But Robbins said she’s anxious to see what that looks like at Langley specifically.

Along with safety protocols, air cleaners and HVAC filters can help reduce airborne contaminants including viruses. has invested in new HVAC enhancements and medical-grade air filters in our school buildings.

To learn more:

— Mayor Muriel Bowser (@MayorBowser)

She said the school doesn’t have a pushed air system. According to the Sept. 23 PTO meeting minutes, administration had found problems with some of the air conditioning units within the building.

“So, my question is are they changing all the filters, are they putting in HEPA filters?” Robbins said.

Despite their concerns, both Robbins and Wright applaud Langley Elementary administrators and teachers for their work in the last months.

Robbins said her children are incredibly engaged during their lessons despite the virtual format. As for Wright, even though it can be slow, she’s grateful for Principal Kristina Kellogg’s communication throughout the transition.

“I’m very understanding of her position and not wanting to give too much information,” Wright said. “She just wants to make sure it’s truthful information and concrete information.”

The only thing to do now, the pair said, is wait for more of that information.

The post Langley Elementary School parents prepare for possibility of another new normal first appeared on 91ÇŃ×Ó.

Mayor Muriel Bowser signed that would allow George Washington University to create a east of the Anacostia River on St. Elizabeth’s campus in Ward 8. And in September, the D.C. Council passed legislation that would give Howard University to build a new, 225-bed hospital on its Georgia Avenue campus in Ward 1.

Both hospitals are “sorely needed,” Councilmember for Ward 5 Kenyan McDuffie said during a recent . There is currently one hospital east of the Anacostia River, which is predominantly Black and low-income.

Howard University Hospital is both one of the country’s few historically Black teaching hospitals and a trusted source of health care for residents who live near it.

The two projects were planned long before the coronavirus pandemic began, but has highlighted the need for a more robust health infrastructure.

More than 600 D.C. residents have died during the coronavirus pandemic, and around 75% of those people were Black. That’s because many Black people are front-line workers. Many minority communities have long lacked access to quality health care, making members of these communities more likely to have a preventable illness, .

“If you have more than one or two chronic conditions, this virus gets a hold of you and immediately attacks and exacerbates the conditions you already have,” Calvin Smith, the chair of the Ward 8 Health Alliance, said.

Trusted access

Anita Norman, the ANC commissioner for LeDroit Park, has lived in that neighborhood for 27 years. She is within walking distance of Howard University Hospital and Medstar Washington Hospital. But she primarily walks to Howard University Hospital for her care.

“It’s good when hospitals serve communities where the people look like them,” said Norman, who attended Howard University and worked as a nurse for the hospital for 10 years.

She said it’s important for doctors, nurses and other health care providers to understand the background from which people are coming. Howard University, and the surrounding areas of LeDroit Park and Bloomingdale, are historically Black neighborhoods.

Washington D.C. has 13 hospitals, but only one full-service hospital (marked in blue) east of the Anacostia River. It will close when the new hospital (marked in green), opens in 2024. Howard University Hospital will also open a new facility (marked in green) in 2026.

The cultural competence of staff, the ability for uninsured people to receive care and the ability for adults to receive preventative care all contribute to whether a person has adequate access to care, .

Although just one person, Norman’s specific situation is an example of health access gone right. She has physicians she trusts within walking distance of her home. She’s accessed both primary and emergency care at Howard University Hospital. And she’s had insurance to defray the costs.

It’s an example of why councilmembers want to maintain and strengthen Howard University Hospital’s capabilities. It’s also why leaders applaud the decision to build a new hospital East of the Anacostia River.

Access within reach

United Medical Center is the only full-service hospital east of the Anacostia River. It is also the district’s only public hospital.

The new hospital will be a partnership between the District, George Washington University and a private management company. But a hospital alone won’t necessarily address health access issues.

Part of the reason United Medical Center struggled to stay afloat is because many residents access health care via the emergency room, which, for a patient, is the most expensive place to receive care, said Calvin Smith, the chair for the Ward 8 Health Alliance.

That wouldn’t be the case if more residents had access to primary care doctors in Ward 8, Smith said.
With the Ward 8 Health Alliance, Smith is primarily focused on connecting Ward 8 residents with primary care physicians.

“One of the challenges you have on the east end of the District is the lack of doctors who live where they work,” Smith said. “The doctor’s offices on the west end of the city so it makes a challenge to get to and from.”

In that sense, it’s not just a new hospital in Ward 8 that will improve health access – it’s the primary and urgent care facilities, the pharmacies and overall health infrastructure that will come with it.

Norman, too, realizes the need for these kinds of services east of the river. It’s why she says that when people think of health care, they shouldn’t think of long sterile hallways and bustling hospitals. They should think of doctors’ offices where people can receive preventative care.

“There should be a push to get every citizen who doesn’t have health care to get them in some sort of managed health care where they have a primary doctor,” Norman said.

Which is exactly what Smith will be doing until Ward 8’s new hospital opens in the coming years.

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But the neighborhood is still teaching her things, she said.

She was recently walking along North Capitol Street when she stopped in front of the Metropolitan Wesley AME Zion Church.

“I was last week years old [when] I learned that was the end stop in the underground railroad,” Hopkinson said. “Why don’t we know?”

The Bloomingdale Civic Association is coming to the end of a years-long project to help Bloomingdale students do just that 一 know about Bloomingdale and its history. The project is called Taking Village History to Our Youth and is spearheaded by Bertha Holliday, the vice president of Bloomingdale Civic Association.

“There was a need to really start grooming a future leadership cadre of folks who were going to be leaders in the community,” Holliday said.

So, she created a curriculum that addresses history, leadership and civic participation. Holliday originally envisioned the curriculum would be administered in schools and community organizations.

But with those venues now operating online, Holliday must recruit teachers and organizations to implement the curriculum while simultaneously making it compatible with online learning – all with mere weeks left in the project’s grant funding.

A shared space

It took Holliday and the Bloomingdale Civic Association (BCA) a year of grant applications before it won a grant from Humanities D.C. to fund the curriculum project. That was in May 2019.

The curriculum has 10 lessons that can be taught in a classroom or community setting, like Sunday schools. It also has 10 field trips. Some of the assignments ask the students to go on walks around their neighborhood, identify landmarks and street names, look them up and present their findings to their class. It also incorporates Bloomingdale Civic Association’s .

Maybe, like Hopkinson, they’ll pass a landmark they had passed dozens of times before, but suddenly learn its significance. Or maybe they will learn the ways racism has shaped the neighborhood.

But long before BCA completed its first grant application, Holliday had been considering how to create a shared space for the next generation of Bloomingdale leaders long before BCA’s first grant application. She had noticed there weren’t many children playing together on streets and sidewalks.

She asked her friend Gwenn Bush-Hodge if she’d noticed the same thing. Bush-Hodge had young children at the time. She doesn’t remember the conversation with Holliday, but she does remember the neighborhood dynamic Holliday was wondering about.

Students in Bloomingdale often go to school outside Bloomingdale, Bush-Hodge said. They are driven to school and their extracurricular activities.

“Children do not see one another!” Bush-Hodge said in an email. “However, if the neighborhood schools were better, children would walk to school and get to know one another.”

This pointed Holliday toward making a curriculum on neighborhood history.

“That was the kind of common denominator,” Holliday said. “But it would also provide skill development to encourage the neighborhood kids to really have a sense of their having some real expertise.”

Bush-Hodge’s children are now 21 and 18 years old. Bush-Hodge isn’t sure that a curriculum on neighborhood history taught in different schools would facilitate the kind of collective identity Holliday hopes.

“In order for children in a neighborhood to know one another beyond a simple hello, they must have a shared learning environment,” Bush-Hodge said.

The curriculum as Holliday imagines it does culminate in a neighborhood showcase that would bring students and parents together.

Hopkinson has children about the same age as Bush-Hodge and said she encountered a similar dynamic when her children were younger. Hopkinson, however, is more optimistic about the possible outcomes of the project.

“The schooling piece is a lot,” Hopkinson said. “This [curriculum] could be something really powerful for Bloomingdale kids how they could bond around … tell the stories about the places around here.”

Hopkinson said one of the most surprising things she learned while working on the project was that there used to be tennis courts between Bryant and Second streets. When the neighborhood was desegregated, the white residents of that parcel dug up the tennis courts and built a structure between themselves and their Black neighbors.

“That is the sort of context that you really need to understand the new changes that are happening right now,” Hopkinson said. “The fears from the Black community are not invented. They are really rooted in historical truth – the way that white people have shared space with Black people.”

In one way, Holliday’s project is having to pivot in order to be compatible with the needs of the moment. But in another way, the completion of the Taking Village History to Our Youth curriculum comes at the perfect time.

A shared story

Holliday had originally planned to recruit schools and community organizations in spring 2020. But then the coronavirus pandemic delayed those efforts.

Uncertainty about how District students would return to school further delayed the project, but Holliday and her team are now back at work, digitizing the curriculum before the project’s funding expires at the end of the month. They will likely apply for more funding, as well.

They are also redoubling their efforts to recruit schools and community organizations. Their goal is to implement the project in January.

“I think the most challenging part is going to be really kind of this small group work,” Holliday said. “You can do that virtually, but can the kids really connect?”

But Holliday said the project does have one thing going for it that it didn’t in the spring – administrative interest.

Even before the protests following George Floyd’s death reinvigorated national conversations on the lack of Black stories in social studies curriculums, Ward 5 D.C. Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie introduced within D.C. public high schools.

The bill is still Holliday said she’s spoken with Councilmember McDuffie about Bloomingdale’s efforts to find a place for its local histories in its classrooms.

Digital hurdles aside, however, Hopkinson said she still thinks there is room for a curriculum like Holliday’s. It gets students out in the neighborhood and away from their computers. The curriculum, Hopkinson said, gives students a sense of place.

“I know my chest puffed out a bit when I found out one of the endings of the underground railroad is like a block from my house,” Hopkinson said. “It gives a lot more meaning to the Sunday run. So, I think it’s great.”

This article was changed Sept. 23 at 1:30 p.m. to reflect the correct name of Natalie Hopkinson 

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