Photo: Innovate Public Schools / Courtesy
With the arrival of the covid-pandemic 19 and the change from in-person classes to online classes, the youngest child of Katy Meza fell too far behind, especially in the subjects of English and mathematics.
“Online learning is useless for him, he needs interact in person with the teacher and the other children,” said Meza, whose son is in fourth grade.
The mother of the family indicated that in her area where she lives, in South Gate, there is no free tutoring and she cannot pay for a tutoring private that costs between $50 to $80 per hour.
“Apart from the closest one was Downey and with everything so expensive you either pay rent or pay tutoring,” Meza said. “Assuming that he only took one hour per week minimum they were $200 to $240 per week”.
For this reason she has joined other parents and Innovate Public Schools, a non-profit organization that advocates for quality public education, to ask the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) that provides the necessary tutoring services to students.
“Tutoring is very necessary right now and one shouldn’t even be taking private tutoring because they they have the funds to give good tutoring. They say they have after-school tutoring, but that’s just childcare,” he stressed.
Carlos Rodríguez, organizer with Innovate Public Schools , said that in the last year, some parent leaders, including Meza, from the southeast area—better known as SELA—have raised their voices regarding the lack of access to quality tutoring.
Rodríguez said that there are many areas where private tutors can be found immediately and there are other places like SELA where there are none.
“It is what we have been calling now a tutoring desert”, Rodríguez said.
So, during the last year, parents have organized themselves to create a initiative to bring together different public entities, cities, the county, LAUSD and others, to invest in quality tutoring.
The Innovate Public Schools policy brief, “Par To address the impacts of the pandemic and teacher shortages, LAUSD students need tutoring now!” details untapped district-wide expanded learning opportunities.
According to Innovate Public Schools, since the start of the pandemic in 2020, LAUSD has received more than $6,000 million in federal funds. Last year, the school district received $300 million from the state. Although much of this funding is earmarked for pandemic recovery strategies such as tutoring and increased learning opportunities, two and a half years into the pandemic, LAUSD has only spent the 35% of funds.
In the fall of 2021, LAUSD has agreed to award $54 millions of these funds for tutoring and small group instruction, but only the 14 % and nothing was spent.
Parents and organizers say that while LAUSD decides when to spend the funds, hundreds of thousands of students are left without essential services to support their academic recovery needs.
Cities take a step forward
Graciela Ortiz, mayor of the city of Huntington Park, said that in her city they noticed that one of the main problems that the pandemic brought to light was the digital divide, as well as additional teaching for the children.
“There was no private tutoring nearby. Even parents who were willing to pay, the closest place was Downey,” Ortiz said. “Agencies do not come to our communities to provide mentorship and this has been for years, even before the pandemic.”
So when Innovate Public Schools mentioned the SELA initiative, for Huntington Park it was a good option since the city council was talking about offering some kind of after-school program in the parks but in a more professional way.
With the help of federal funds, the The city of Huntington Park has created two programs, one is to offer WiFi for the entire city and the other is tutoring.
“We will have this pilot program during the summer and fall,” he said.
They will start by focusing on second and third graders because those are the kids who have not had a full school experience as when they started school, they either started digitally or had very little in-person instruction before the pandemic started mine.
South Gate has also committed to providing funds to offer tutoring to its residents. Both cities have agreed to spend $50,000 in the pilot program to provide immediate assistance to families.
Meanwhile, LAUSD has a website to offer online tutoring help by visiting: https://www.stepuptutoring.org/
But parents like Aida Vega indicate that neither this tutoring nor the group tutoring is useful for children who need more specialized and individual attention.
“We are not looking for help with homework. We need individual tutoring that assesses the progress of each student and supports them where they need help,” said Vega.