{"id":4881,"date":"2020-11-23T00:08:21","date_gmt":"2020-11-23T05:08:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.indianz.com\/News\/?p=4881"},"modified":"2020-11-23T00:19:19","modified_gmt":"2020-11-23T05:19:19","slug":"cronkite-news-navajo-nation-copes-with-widespread-impacts-of-covid-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/indianz.com\/News\/2020\/11\/23\/cronkite-news-navajo-nation-copes-with-widespread-impacts-of-covid-19\/","title":{"rendered":"Cronkite News: Navajo Nation copes with widespread impacts of COVID-19"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t\t\n\t\t\tNavajo school district fights to overcome amid COVID-19 | Cronkite News\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/div>\n\t
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Even in the best of times, Native American K-12 students have faced an uphill battle to getting a high school diploma. Now COVID has brought new challenges, …<\/p>\n\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/div>\n\t

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Cronkite News Video by Megan Marples: Navajo school district fights to overcome amid COVID-19<\/a>\r\n<\/figcaption>\r\n
\u2018It\u2019s creating a new normal\u2019: A Navajo school district and its students fight to overcome amid COVID-19<\/div>\r\n
Monday, November 23, 2020<\/div>\r\n
By Anthony J. Wallace<\/div>\r\n
Cronkite News<\/DIV>\r\n
cronkitenews.azpbs.org<\/A><\/DIV>\r\n

<\/P>\r\nPI\u00d1ON, Arizona \u2013 One student runs 85 feet up a hill every morning, just to get a cellphone signal so he can call in his attendance. Another moved to Phoenix by himself, after his only parent died of COVID-19<\/a>, to work construction while going to school online.

<\/P>\r\nThen there\u2019s the high school senior who spends six hours most days doing homework in a car next to a school bus turned Wi-Fi hotspot \u2013 the only way some kids on the Navajo Nation can get assignments to their teachers.

<\/P>\r\nThese kids share a dream: to graduate high school, find a way to go to college, get a degree, land a dream job \u2013 get out of their small town, succeed and soar.

<\/P>\r\n\r\nEven in the best of times, that dream is harder for Native American students to attain. And now COVID-19 has brought one of the greatest challenges yet to these young people.\r\n

<\/P>\r\nFor them, it\u2019s about so much more than being separated from friends or having to figure out how to use Zoom. All that isolation and upheaval has been accompanied by death and great loss.

<\/P>\r\nAcross the Navajo reservation, victims of COVD-19 include parents and grandparents, sole guardians and providers, mentors and teachers. Without them, some students have lost their way or, quite literally, fallen off the map.

<\/P>\r\nSaid one district superintendent: \u201cWe have some kids that we just don\u2019t know where they are.\u201d

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Second-grader Winona Begaye uploads homework in her family\u2019s vehicle near Pi\u00f1on. Navajo Nation schools have remained virtual this fall because it\u2019s too dangerous to reopen their doors. To help families with no internet or poor access get online, the Pi\u00f1on Unified School District outfitted school buses with Wi-Fi. Photo by Megan Marples \/ Cronkite News<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n
A school district fights to survive<\/div>\r\nThe drive from Flagstaff northeast to Pi\u00f1on takes more than two hours over a two-lane highway and dirt road. Just a few hundred families live in this community, in modest houses scattered across hills roamed by horses and dotted with brush.

<\/P>\r\nA single campus accommodates the elementary, middle and high schools.

<\/P>\r\nHere, on a reservation the size of West Virginia, the COVID-19 death rate has been higher than that of any U.S. state. So even as some schools reopened for in-person learning this fall, those on the Navajo reservation did not.

<\/P>\r\nWithout the 300 students who normally fill its cafeteria, crowd its lockers and seek help in its counseling offices, Pi\u00f1on High\u2019s cavernous hallways are unnaturally quiet. Do-not-disturb signs hang on classroom doors, indicating Zoom sessions in progress.

<\/P>\r\nInside one empty room, a carpentry teacher plays heavy metal music and bobs his head at his desk. In another, science teacher James Gustafson\u2019s lab tables are covered with surplus VHS videos that he\u2019s sorting through for hidden gems.

<\/P>\r\n\u201c\u2018Citizen Kane!\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cThat makes it all worth it.\u201d

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Pi\u00f1on High School science teacher James Gustafson teaches virtually from his empty classroom. Unlike their students, the school\u2019s teachers report to campus each day, careful to wear masks and keep space between them. Photo by Megan Marples \/ Cronkite News\r\n<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\nOn Gustafson\u2019s desk are printed progress reports adhered to colorful construction paper. They identify students anonymously by a number, tracking their scores on weekly quizzes. He\u2019s preparing to hang them in the halls for other teachers to see.

<\/P>\r\nThe grades are far worse than what he saw last year.

<\/P>\r\n\u201cThese are ungodly low compared to how they should be,\u201d he said, \u201cbecause I\u2019ve given the students who\u2019ve turned nothing in \u2013 and there\u2019s a lot of them \u2013 I\u2019ve given the students who\u2019ve turned nothing in a zero.\u201d

<\/P>\r\n\r\nEven before the pandemic, Native youth had the highest dropout rates in the U.S., leaving school at more than twice the rate of white children, according to federal \r\nstatistics<\/a>.\r\n

<\/P>\r\n\r\nLikewise, the graduation rate for American Indian and Alaska Native children is the lowest in the country \u2013 \r\n72%<\/a>, compared with a national average of 85%.\r\n

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The pandemic has forced students at Pi\u00f1on High School to attend school virtually, leaving the once-bustling cafeteria and hallways vacant. Photos by Megan Marples \/ Cronkite News\r\n<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\u201cDistressing\u201d is how a \r\nreport<\/a>\r\nfrom the National Caucus of Native American State Legislators described the state of education for K-12 schools for Native students. And the pandemic has only served to further spotlight disparities.\r\n

<\/P>\r\n\r\nMore than \r\n600<\/a>\r\nof the Navajo reservation\u2019s 173,000 residents have died from COVID-19. Compare that rate of 347 for every 100,000 people to Maricopa County \u2013 Arizona\u2019s largest \u2013 where the death rate is 86 per 100,000 people.\r\n

<\/P>\r\nThe risk of returning to class is greater on the reservation, and the price of keeping schools closed is steeper.

<\/P>\r\n\r\nPi\u00f1on High School Principal Timothy Nelson said COVID-19 has claimed at least six parents and two district staff members \u2013 a front office worker and a teaching assistant.

<\/P>\r\n\u201cSome people may think it\u2019s a joke and it\u2019s not a big deal,\u201d Nelson said of the disease. \u201cBut when you\u2019re living with it and you see it, it\u2019s not so much a joke anymore.\u201d

<\/P>\r\nDarrick Franklin, an education program manager with the Department of Din\u00e9 Education, spent months working with officials in New Mexico and Arizona to keep schools on the reservation closed as others around them reopened or went to hybrid learning.

<\/P>\r\n\r\nThe focus for Franklin\u2019s department, he said, is to \u201cprotect the Navajo people\u201d \u2013 a sentiment shared across Navajo leadership. In August, President Jonathan Nez issued a \r\nstatement<\/a>\r\nurging schools to remain virtual until at least 2021 to protect the safety of students, teachers and staff members.\r\n

<\/P>\r\n\u201cAt this point in time, we have to protect our children, our families, our elderly,\u201d Franklin said. \u201cEspecially our elderly, because they are the storytellers \u2026 they are the heart of the Navajo Nation.\u201d

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