Helene learning loss in Western NC addressed with new relief bill

Ashe County public schools are going to have a full house this summer. After a mix of bad weather and severe storms closed schools there for 47 days, Superintendent Eisa Cox plans to take full advantage of a Helene learning loss summer school program. The legislature is funding the program in its most recent recovery bill.

The $9 million School Extension Learning Recovery Program is open to schools in 13 impacted Western North Carolina counties: Ashe, Avery, Buncombe, Burke, Haywood, Henderson, Madison, McDowell, Mitchell, Rutherford, Transylvania, Watauga and Yancey. 

It covers grades 4 through 8 and focuses on intensive recovery in math and reading. Each participating school will receive at least $20,000 for the program and possibly double that, depending on how much state money is left over after all schools get initial funding. 

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While one of the lower-dollar items in the $524 million recovery package, the summer school program could mean a lot for Ashe County students. The school system already uses grant funding to run summer programs for various grades. Still, without state funds, having a “robust” learning loss program serving multiple grades in different schools would have been impossible, Cox said. 

“That’s a hefty price in order to be able to do that for kids,” she said. “You’re talking about feeding them, transportation, the cost of the teacher over the summer, and, of course, you don’t want to put 30 kids in a class. That’s not going to achieve what you want for students who are already struggling to be on grade level.”

Helene learning loss overlooked — at first

While Gov. Josh Stein’s Helene recovery request included a summer learning loss program, the first version of the General Assembly’s Helene recovery bill didn’t offer a penny for public schools. 

State Rep. Marcia Morey, D-Durham, took note. She recalled a retreat where she spoke with public school leaders from Western North Carolina who told her how “dire” the need was to get back in the classroom. Four years out, students were still recovering from pandemic learning loss. Helene only exacerbated the issue. 

“We have eight counties. We have at least four schools (where) kids couldn’t go back — they had to go to other facilities,” she said in February on the House floor. “We have two schools totally decimated. And so we’re not doing it today, but our public school kids need a place to go. They need a facility. I hope in the next bill we will address the children out west in these affected counties.”

Morey tried to file an amendment to the legislature’s initial bill, but was told she was too late. 

The next version of the bill included a $9 million summer learning program. 

Morey said she wasn’t directly involved. 

“I think they just knew they had to respond to it,” she told Carolina Public Press. “It was astounding that nothing was included in the first relief bill.”

Lessons from the pandemic

Not all missed school days are created equal. Losing one day could take a few hours, a day or a week to recover, depending on the grade level and subject matter. 

For example, earlier grades typically learn a “mile wide” and an “inch deep,” covering a broader range of subjects than later grades, which tend to focus on one or two concepts, explained Jeni Corn, the impact evaluation and strategy director for the North Carolina Collaboratory. 

This can make it harder for younger students to make up for lost time. Additionally, math concepts typically take longer to recover than those involving social studies. 

The legislature first partnered with the North Carolina Collaboratory, housed at UNC-Chapel Hill, to research the impacts of the pandemic on K-12 education. Among the various studies was one looking at the effect of a state-funded summer school program designed to address pandemic learning loss. 

That study now forms the basis of the Helene summer school program, Corn said. 

Researchers found that higher summer school attendance correlated with better attendance the following academic year for students in grades 4 through 8 and seventh and eighth graders. They also discovered modest gains in math test scores among students who had high summer attendance, but no impact on reading scores.

Summer school programs can’t cure all learning loss, but they can improve student engagement through continued connection with their fellow peers and teachers, the researchers concluded. 

Cox, the Ashe County superintendent, came to the same determination. A dozen days of summer school is never going to be enough time to recover from weeks of learning loss, but it can still help. 

“When kids aren’t in school, they may not have a meal,” Cox said. “When kids are not in school, they may not have an adult around them during most of the day that can help them provide the structure to be able to read to them, to be able to provide them with direction.” 

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