After AP investigation into missing students, children return to school

ATLANTA (AP) — Four months after the Associated Press wrote about an Atlanta family having difficulty enrolling in school, all the children – in a complete turnaround – returned to class last month. The project was named Monday a Pulitzer Prize finalist.

The youngest child, an energetic 8-year-old, had never been to school before. On her first day, she was greeted at home by a half-dozen children from around the building, who escorted her to the bus stop, her mother said.

“I was very excited for her,” Tameka said. “My other children know what school is like. I want that experience for her.

(Tameka is her middle name. The AP has withheld her full name because she faces the risk of prison time or losing custody since her children have not gone to school.)

The last child, a student with Down syndrome, started school last Tuesday, Tameka said.

Thousands of students has disappeared from American classrooms during the pandemic and online learning. For Tameka’s four children, the disruption to schooling lasted four years. Paralyzing povertycumbersome red tape and depression prevented her from returning to school – or starting it for the first time.

Atlanta Public Schools received $332 million in federal stimulus money to help students recover from pandemic-related learning loss and return to school. But school staff had all but stopped trying to contact Tameka’s family until an AP reporter began inquiring about them last year, according to shared communications logs by the district.

Tameka often lacked a working phone, but the district relied on phone messages and made only one home visit over more than three years, records show. (AP reporters visited Tameka at her home to communicate with her.)

After the AP published its story on Tameka and continued to inquire, the school contacted the state Department of Child Welfare at least once, according to district spokesman Seth Coleman. In March, Child Services threatened to remove her children if they were not in school by mid-April, Tameka said.

The same month, Tameka received a large check from the federal government, thanks to a refundable child tax creditallowing her to replace a broken phone and run errands to complete the complicated paperwork needed to enroll her children.

Tameka’s three older children — ages 9, 13 and 14 — did not return to school in person when Atlanta reopened in fall 2021. The school district removed the children from the rolls when They missed 10 consecutive days, citing a state regulation. .

A few months later, Tameka tried to send two of her children to school, not realizing that they no longer had space in their primary and secondary schools.

Re-registering them seemed impossible. In addition to filing an application, Atlanta requires a minimum of eight documents to enroll a child in school, including a notarized affidavit.

Tameka had lost most of her family’s official documents when her partner died of a heart attack in May 2020, at the height of the pandemic chaos. He carried the family’s birth certificates, Medicaid cards and Social Security cards in a backpack he lost at the hospital.

Without her income and unable to work because she had to care for young children, Tameka had little money. The family of five survives on food stamps and $900 a month in government assistance.

When phones or their chargers broke, she couldn’t afford to replace them.

So when she received a refundable tax credit of about $6,000 in March, it was a well-deserved opportunity to buy a new phone. “I was mobile again. I could use the phone to call an Uber or Lyft,” said Tameka, who doesn’t have a driver’s license and lives far from public transportation.

Around the same time, a social worker from the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services visited Tameka. Atlanta Public Schools apparently reported the agency after the AP story appeared, and a reporter continued to inquire about Tameka’s family. The agency’s social workers had come to the scene about six months earlier and urged Tameka to send the children to school. This time, they gave him a deadline: April 15. If she failed to enroll them, social workers would place her children in foster care, they told her.

The deadline helped focus Tameka, who was already considering the school year, which ends May 24, as wasted. “I wanted them to start from scratch – with everyone else,” she said. “But they had other ideas,” she said, referring to child welfare social workers.

After the December story about Tameka’s struggle to enroll her children in school, an Atlanta Public Schools social worker visited her home in January — the first attempt at in-person contact by the district in nearly three years, according to school records. When the social worker couldn’t find her at home, they left a flyer asking her to call them, according to spokesman Seth Coleman.

After that, the district announced its intention to investigate the family’s residence. The practice has become more common since 2008, when the Atlanta school board sought to prevent parents living in other parts of the city from sending their children to schools in gentrifying neighborhoods.

“We will conduct a further review of all facts available to us to determine whether the family resides within the Atlanta Public School boundaries and, if so, in which school zone,” Coleman wrote in a letter electronic in April. “Our staff did EVERYTHING they could to help this parent and family and continue to do so. »

During the reporting, the AP visited Tameka and her family at their Atlanta apartment a half-dozen times, often showing up unannounced because Tameka did not have a working phone. Neighbors and building workers often knew where she was when she didn’t answer the door. His residence was never in doubt.

Tameka was surprised to learn that the district was questioning whether she lived in Atlanta and whether her children were eligible to attend their schools. “I’m not trying to run or hide,” she said. “They act like I’m trying to hide or like I’m a criminal.”

Yet Tameka recognizes how his depression and feelings of being overwhelmed have clouded his judgment and ability to solve problems. “I never asked for help,” she said. “I was trying to do things on my own.”

When they registered, the four children took tests to determine which class they should enter. And the district offered kids summer school spots, Tameka said.

But their place at school is still provisional. The district admitted them without all their documents. Tameka had 30 days to take each child to the doctor and complete a state-required health certificate assessing their nutrition, vision, hearing and dental health.

She hasn’t made all the appointments yet.

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Associated Press video journalist Sharon Johnson contributed to this report.

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