zuckerberg, sundar pichai and jack dorsey about online misinformation and disinformation. online at noon on c-span.or railroad gr or listen on the c span radio app. every weekend we give you a preview of what's available on c-span3. lonnie bunch is serving as secretary of the smithsonian institution. tonight his discussion with documentary filmmaker ken burns about the complexities of telling america's story. watch tonight at 8:00 eastern and join american history tv every weekend on c-span3. we're joined by ray aldunja. he is president and ceo of

communities in schools. he's here to talk about how kids are doing during the pandemic in school. welcome from san antonio. >> thank you for having me. >> what's your mission? >> we are a national nonprofit. our mission is very simple. we work inside schools and we surround students with a system of support. what that looks like in its simplest form is that we have 4,100 staff deployed all across the country who are invited to be inside schools, and in normal circumstances, what we are doing is assessing the needs of a student. those can be things as simple as ensuring that students have access to food, to shelter, to clothing, all these elements that sometimes need to be stabilized in a student's life before they can begin the process of learning. so in that way, we are the best friend to teachers and principals in the schools that we work with, in many cases

doing a case-managed fashion to ensure those students have everything they need to be successful in school. again, those are normal circumstances, and i don't want to bury the lead here. i lead the organization today, but i'm also a product of the program here in san antonio, texas, so for me that work was connecting with my psych coordinator whose name is mrs. reyes, and that's really the secret sauce in schools, is the work of that psych coordinator across country. >> take a minute and tell us about that experience that led to you the work you're doing today. >> absolutely. so i grew up in a community that oftentimes was looking for ways to support young people, and i'm a first generation american, first in my family to graduate from high school and college. so oftentimes what's difficult is in circumstances like mine, we may go home and have aspirations to graduate, to go to college, but we don't know how to do that on our own, and sometimes, especially in the community that i grew up with, some of our schools are so

overburdened that there is enough on the shoulders of students of principals and counselors that they say you have to be a psychotherapist, a counselor. our school made sure i had everything to pay for college, to prepare for college, the tests, and the psych coordinator is trying to figure out what every student needs. some might have barriers they need to overcome so they can be successful in school. >> you're in stan antonio, texas. what other cities is your organization operating in? >> we are in 121 communities all across country. we're in 26 states. in urban, rural, suburban communities, so as diverse as atlanta, georgia, chicago, illinois, west virginia, rural ohio or even seattle and the rural communities in washington

state. so, again, in 26 states all across the country. >> and the numbers of students you typically would work with, say, prior to covid, how many students would you be working with? >> that's an excellent question. the psych coordinator we work with, if they're case managing students, usually don't want to have any more than 30 to 40 students per caseload. that allows you to build a strong relationship with that student and try to track them year after year through their educational journey. today we are serving 1.7 million students all across the country and being invited into schools, especially during this difficult time. things have changed, as you mentioned. >> take us back a year. before things, as things started to change, how did your organization respond initially. what were the first few things that you did? >> you have to remember that the schools and the communities and the students and families that we work with oftentimes are disproportionately impacted by

any change in crisis, and the last 12 months have been everything that has been thrown at our families has been a crisis. so the first few months when schools were closed in mid-march 2020, the work did not stop. communities in schools, the case management students that we supported in schools all across the country had to continue, so oftentimes that relationship that we had developed with a student who was at their safest place in many communities, at school, was now -- we were deployed into the field. and, really, that's the bottom line to our work, is that there is no shortcuts to build relationships with students, so when schools shut down, we had to stand in line at grocery stores while everything was being stocked and restocked and there was a scarcity of food and resources. we were managing food lines, delivering technology and wi-fi connectivity so our students could connect. oftentimes they didn't have a device at home or they were the last to find out about resources that existed in their community to support them during this

difficult time. >> a couple topics and several topics we can explore, too, i do want to invite our listeners to call in and talk to rey saldana particularly about how low-income kids are doing and faring with the pandemic. 202-748-8000. for educators the line is 202-748-8001. and for all others, 202-748-8002. let's fast-forward to today and some of the data that's coming out on how kids are faring in school. the organization mckenzie, the consulting group mckenzie in their report, most students are falling behind but students of color are faring worse. they're looking at comparing historical scores on several age groups, reading k-5, math k-5 average, fairly sharp falloff in

those groups. rey saldana, how are those kids going to catch up? >> bill, thank you so much for that question and acknowledging what i think we all know to be true, that there were students who were more deeply hurt by the impact of closing schools and going through this unwanted experiment that we've gone through. the mckenzie study you pointed to clearly points out that some of our students, particularly those students of color, those living in poverty, are going to be six to twelve months behind in their learning, so the strategy we are considering at communities in schools and also in partnership with our school districts is ensuring that we are expanding learning opportunities beyond just what we've seen during the normal course of this school year. you're going to see a lot of intensive support for summer and removing the stigma that summer is only about remediation. it's really going to be about the acceleration of learning and there needs to be a level of grace for our teachers. we need to care for the

caregivers and the way we do that is make sure we don't burden them with all the responsibilities that our students are going to be coming back to school with. we've all experienced a traumatic event, and there is going to be some unpacking, some trauma-informed care that we need to support our students with and their families while teachers are focused on the learning. that's why communities in schools find themselves to be best friends and partners with school leadership, so they can pitch us to the students who truly need more engaged support and assessment and an ongoing continuum of resources from inside the school and outside the community. >> you touched on wi-fi connectivity moments ago. there is a tweet here from a viewer that says, up north in wisconsin, we have no choice but to go to school. there is scant wi-fi infrastructure. >> yeah, really great question to ask and to pose for anybody who is interested in support and wants to support public education and how difficult these choices can be right now. we have a similar situation in

rural georgia, rural west virginia where we work, or even in rural texas where what we're working on is not connectivity or wi-fi hot spots, it's transportation issues for some of the students who just don't have access, whose parents lost a job. for us, we're trying to identify ways that we can meet students' needs, so if that is connectivity, if that is a device, sometimes we're playing the role of i.t. specialist, and teachers were not prepped years in advance of how to do this, neither was our staff, so we have to fit the needs of students, whether you're in a country or rural setting. >> the mckenzie report also says that black and hispanic students are more likely to be learning remotely. they compare the average of 60% remote learning, 49% white, 69% of black students are doing remote learning and 70% of hispanic students. why is that? >> a really important point that a lot of us are trying to

understand. i think the research is going to tell us much more in months or years, but what i know from talking to my staff, who is out in the field, it's oftentimes really difficult to get over this barrier of trust in some of our communities, specifically our communities of color who feel like having lived in these neighborhoods, going to these schools, oftentimes these are the schools guilt in the '40s or '50s who haven't been upgraded who have huge obligations for debt that need to support the hvac system, the circulation system. i think there is a deliberation that parents, especially in communities of color, are going through about whether we can keep our students safe, and so that's my speculation that comes from conversations i've had with staff, is that we need to ensure that we are working and doubling down on building relationships with our parents, especially those who feel like they need to ensure there is confidence in the school system, in school funding and support for their

children. >> let's go to calls and hear first from lynn in june lake, california. good morning. >> caller: good morning. i'd like to know where the funding comes from for who mr. saldana is working for, and this has been the biggest thing in our lifetime happening to our kids, and watching the unions fighting to keep the kids out, and we can't open, and every single kid, it doesn't matter what color they are, i'm so sick of the color division. kids are struggling and so are families everywhere. and my daughter is a teacher, and even the kids that she thought would be all right, the quote, unquote stronger kids are failing. and so all you people can meet and discuss and have meetings

and throw billions and billions and billions of dollars at this messed-up communication system while every family in america is completely getting screwed. >> june, thank you so much for calling in and for your question. i want to really lift up something we talked about earlier here in the program. this mckenzie study really reaffirms what june describes here, which is every student is going to be behind coming through when we reopen schools or come back to a sense of normalcy. the facts pointed out that students, whether they were white, 4 to 6 months, black or brown. the way we communicate at schools, it's called brady funding. we fund local school districts who are able to tap into state public dollars as well as

federal title 1 dollars specifically slated to those living in low-income communities or below the poverty line. we make sure the students we meet with the most have the support they need with a psych coordinator in schools. we're also supported by philanthropy so it's a mix that we can subsidize the cause. mrs. reyes is the psych coordinator across our country. >> the "washington post" had an extensive piece in indio, california, it's a high school of about 2100 students. the assistant principal is rich pamitel, and he spends time each week going out to find kids who have been missing from school. that's part of his role each week. they detail it in their story. they write in the story about that. the school had been closed since march 13, 2020.

as the months dragged on, pimantel had begun to worry not just about his students' whereabouts, but also what their absence could portend for the rest of their lives. it was too early to announce the legacy of a pandemic but there was potential damage. test scores in some parts of the country were down by 7%. chronic absenteeism for students of color had doubled. experts were forecasting a rise in inequity between public and private schools. falling grade rates for at-risk students and at least a 3-point decline for earnings for students of color. what that meant at indio high school was that the middle ground had all but disappeared. when pimantel studied the grade reports, he saw almost no c's. there were students in stable homes that got a's and b's and hundreds of at-risk students who

were falling and failing at a historic rate. >> bill, thank you for bringing that story to light here. what it really describes is something assistant principal pimantel, it sounds like he's doing the work that a lot of our schools have been asked to do by our partners. especially in mid-march, let's find the basic needs that our students need, and then what we've been working through the last several months is actually finding students. there are students who didn't show up to virtual learning throughout the spring, the summer and the fall and didn't show up to in-person when it reopened. some of the statistics are just frightening. in a place like texas here, some of those early stats were 250,000 students who were unaccounted for who didn't show up in virtual or in-person, and what principal pimantel has been doing is what we've been doing, going out and knocking on doors. if you've ever knocked on door,

sometimes it's difficult to get someone to answer, but it's doubly difficult in a pandemic when people are concerned. we've been going to schools where the students have known us for years, so when we're out the door the difference is between someone answering and someone telling you what it is they need is when they know you. that's mr. saldana, that's mrs. race, that's mr. clark. you can open the door, i know him. that's what it's taken for us to find the students that have gone missing. >> mustafia is in atlanta on that line. good morning. >> caller: good morning. how are you? >> i'm fine. make sure you turn your radio down so we don't hear that feedback. go ahead with your comment. >> caller: i work for communities of schools in atlanta, and thank you for having rey on so he can share

about what we do. again, thank you. to kind of piggyback on some of the things you were saying, you show the chart, you're dealing with black and brown children and a large number of them staying at home. what we're finding in the field, a lot of them are staying home because, as rey said, there may be a distrust about dealing with the school system. there is now a need for the same child to potentially work. we find a lot of our students are working 20, 30, 40 hours a week to help bring funds into the home. a lot of our students are being housed in different households because rent issues or families becoming homeless during this time at just extremely high rates. we found that some parents have had to, again, leave their

children with extended family so they can go and work outside of their communities or even outside of the state to bring in some earnings. some of our children are having to care for their younger brothers and sisters and also the ill in the home. so there is a lot of other responsibilities that are just amplified now in these communities far and beyond where they were before. but as a psych coordinator, like rey said, we never stopped. we stayed on the ground. we continued to work with our families to find whatever resources we could find in any capacity. we were the ones out there in the food lines along with any and everyone else in the community, so i just appreciate the opportunity, and again, i appreciate you having rey on so that he can, again, share, and hopefully this brings greater light to the need in the schools for organizations like communities in schools and also the funding that will better support what we're here to do and what we are doing.

so, again, thank you. >> appreciate your call. >> thank you so much. that's so incredibly important. i want to lift up two of the pieces that our friend from atlanta has described, because this is the moment we're living through. one of which is -- we're learning in places like atlanta and l.a., especially students who are living in poverty or students of color who are black or brown, aren't showing up as often because they ever an earpod at the same time they're waiting a table or listening or taking orders, oftentimes having to take jobs because a parent has lost their job. the other is having to take care of other siblings. you can do that, of course, in a virtual learning experience. so what i think that tells us is that the virtual or distance learning may not be going anywhere. it may still be supplemental to what we do in public education and in communities and schools. but i think more than anything, it tells us that public education does need to change to meet the needs of students, and we haven't been doing a great

job of that over the last decades to ensure we're meeting the needs of every student. >> let's hear from melissa next, bloomfield, iowa. go ahead, melissa. >> caller: thanks so much for taking my call, guys. i have the biggest question que the world because iowa, south dakota, we never shutdown our schools. i want to know why, you know, we have so many parents that say it's so tough for the kids and that, that and the other when it's the parents' responsibility to take care of the kids, it's the parents' responsibility to make sure those kids go to school, but when we have a government that says these kids can't go to school. all these kids are getting left behind because of this virtual teaching. the teachers don't even show up half the time. it's ridiculous. i want to know why there are so many parents and so many government agencies and --

and -- and as far as yourself goes, why are you not going against the teachers' unions. they are the ones keeping these kids out of school? >> melissa in iowa. ray, any thoughts? >> yeah, thank you for the question especially coming from a community like iowa, and the schools stayed open, and we have to find ways to respond to the local context, and that may mean some schools have returned to 100% in-person, and some are in a hybrid fashion. what that tells us is we want to get to some version of stable, and we have to support students not academic issues as well, and when we come back, here's the bottom line that we have learned the community and schools, over four decades of work is often

times when we place the burdens at home, and we agree with that, and so we engage with families when they exist, and we know we have worked with students in the foster care system and students that don't have a mom or dad at home, or are working with overburdenened grandparents. we have to show up for students who may need and have a lot of issues, because our founder says you have to get turned on to living before learning and that means building a relationship that you trusted and who you trust will support you when you really need them. >> looking at a school, and here's a report from indiana. this is from "usa today." schools check in on struggling kids and focus in on saying that internet has been the worse, said samantha riley, it shutdowns all the time, when

that happens she uses the wi-fi emitting from a school bus that sits in front of her apartment complex, one of several parked around the community to fill the gaps, and keeping kids on task at home isn't easy. quote, it just seems like we are always butting heads over this. are there specific policy recommendations out of this that your organization is calling for, particularly in the lines of technology access for kids and under-served communities? >> well, bill, pulling back from what we will learn from the experience, there's real equity issues. if you turn the switch on, which we did now, and saying let's try to connect virtually, what you discover is issues of equity, and whether you are in a rural

community or urban setting that doesn't have the infrastructure for it, we know we have been letting a lot of students behind on purpose, and the reason i say on purpose is because we learned in the first few months that you could do this, that large telecommunications companies and schools and school districts along with private partners could set up the infrastructure to deliver devices and set up the connectivity, and it's not just the question of putting a device in a home, there's so much asked of teachers and staff at schools to be tech specialists and supporting students and parents that don't know how to work the system and infrastructure, and it's digital equity, but as you pointed out in this story, nobody has felt like this has been the best experience, so what students have felt and are continuing to feel is they -- going through a traumatic experience, when you

go through a traumatic experience, there will be post traumatic stress after the event and we have to make sure we are connecting with students, social, emotional and mental health, and we need to be prepared with the professionals and the staff at communities and schools to welcome that, and make sure we are measuring and supporting the students. >> a tweet from lee says as long as the quality of education is determined by your zip code, it's hopeless. and another tweet from margaret, she says the degree has to be paired with a coaching degree, and i am told she remains without a job. the learning gap is getting worse for students as students rely on remote classes, especially for students of color. that's from "time" magazine.

to buoy, maryland, we hear from maryland. good morning. >> reporter: hi. . >> caller: i appreciate what the schools and community is doing that i think is necessary, but i also think some organizations should be promoting and letting parents know if you have a child that is a year behind, that it is okay to repeat that grade. i don't -- all the stop gap measures that we are putting in place, i think it's hurting children without communicating that to children -- i mean to the community. so for example, my daughter, when she was in first grade going to second she read on -- she was six months behind. i changed her school and i was lucky because she was in private

school, and she repeated that grade and she has done fabulous. it was the best thing. it filled all her gaps. i think we need to change the conversation -- not add but change, a year behind cannot be made up in the summer. this is an opportunity to transform where your child is. repeat the grade. that's just my thoughts. >> okay. ray. >> thank you for your call from maryland, and i appreciate that story because it speaks to the level of advocacy that we are hearing and seeing and experiencing from parents all across the country. in some of the early research and survey findings, what we know from parents is they don't want to completely do away with school, they want to send their students back to public education or to the system they were in so there's -- this is not a turn the table over moment. we at communities and students

along like advocates like caroline want to see -- there are students that are left behind, not because they just have to repeat a grade, although there's policy and research to make sure students are fulfilling needs, and there's a test or pressure that indicates if you can move ahead or not, and what we need to talk about with this upblg about what we can add as a component of the architecture of public schools is there's somebody on that school campus building a relationship with students, who mighting falling or, you know, at risk of not realizing their potential. so we are not trying to save students or throwing out life rafts, but we are want to go ensure that students can write

their success story and that needs to exist at the public schools, which just a quick statistic, 75% of young people who get mental health support get that at school. i think that tells you about the level of support we can provide at a school campus. >> you and the shaq, shaquille o'neal, the headline of the opinion piece, 3 million kids missing from school because of covid-19. how did you get together with shaquille o'neal? >> well, shaquille o'neal is also a supporter of another non-profit, the boys & girls club, and he's on the national board for over a year tphoeu recognizing that were it not for the boys & girls club or programs like communities and schools, students like him that grew up in communities -- to speak to another caller's at point, based on a zip code can

determine your future, and we penned that op-ed to say we could have been one of the students that had fallen off the radar with little or no connection to a campus, and we didn't know how to navigate that ourselves and we could have been one of the students who had fallen behind. so shaquille o'neal has been an incredible supporter and he understands and walks the walk with our non-profit and others to support students, and it's important for leaders of color to understand how important it is that our communities be lifted up. >> let's go to our communicators line, and this is david in inglewood, new jersey. >> i just want to make three quick points. the first one is, what are you trying to do is great, and it's helpful but you are trying to replace the parents and for 50 years we have had a breakdown of the family in this country and that's the source of all these

problems. government cannot replace true parents at home raising these kids. whenever we try to get around that and try to sugar coat it, we wound up with all these problems. the second point is your zip code doesn't necessarily mean the equity you are going to get, we need to give these kids school vouchers. you will never come out and say that because i don't feel you're there, but why should these kids be trapped and failing schools. why is it the catholic schools have been open all along, tkrbg

all along, and so we have got to deal with the family issue and none of this will be solved no matter how much money we throw the eight until we have two parents dedicated. when i grew up my parents told me your only job is to go to school and get an education. >> appreciate the call. ray saldana. >> there's a lot of important sentiments in there that we could agree with and one i want to lift up, and i think the point is a correct one, when we can support families and we can support families, we do it, our community and staff has plenty of examples where at the end of the day mom or dad need support as well. i know in the case of my own family and the case of the families we work with, especially during the pandemic, families that just did not know how to navigate the resources that were availabl t