We must close the digital divide for Mississippi’s students

Alexandra Melnick
Guest columnist

During the coronavirus pandemic, we all take solace in the internet. However, what happens when your lifeline is dependent on your parents’ income level and something as innocuous as the weather? 

I live and teach in the Mississippi Delta, where the lack of funding presents unique challenges. Many internet companies do not provide services to the more rural areas of my county and students simply cannot attend virtual school if the weather does not permit it. 

Alexandra Melnick

This lack of connectivity has caused significant learning gaps and losses in my area even before the pandemic and it is much worse now. One of my students, Jaquavion, lives in a very rural area where there is significantly reduced access to the internet. 

Jaquavion “disappeared” on us and when I asked my co-workers as I was trying to find him, one of them mentioned they had not heard from Jaquavion since we left to go on spring break. Jaquavion had no way to access his education since April. 

Luckily, one of his teachers was able to bring him a personal hotspot. Imagine the unacceptable loss to Jaquavion’s education if that hadn’t happened.

The digital divide is keeping Jaquavion and thousands of other students like him across Mississippi from continuing their education during the pandemic. 

It is unacceptable that poverty has prevented our students from attending school fully this year. It is equally unacceptable for students to depend on teachers and staff members giving up their own devices to access their public education. 

Teachers would give their all for their students. However, it is manifestly unfair and unnecessary to ask them to do this. As the U.S. Congress deliberates the federal stimulus plan, they must prioritize education funding to provide equitable opportunities for our students in Mississippi. 

We need significant funding of the Education Stabilization Fund in addition to the FCC E-Rate program to provide our students with a consistent and high-quality education.

When it rains in my small Delta town, all of our power, and thus all of our internet, goes out. So when it rained this spring, I could not do my work. Students couldn’t ask me for help and I couldn’t respond to them. We were only a few miles apart but totally isolated from each other. 

If we had hot spots or adequate technology, we could’ve communicated. I could’ve been teaching. Increased funding would help to fix this problem and empower educators and students while keeping them safe and addressing the educational losses caused by the pandemic.

There are thousands of Jaquavions in my state and millions in our nation. It is time for us as a country to pour much-needed resources into our education system to transform the narrative of our most at-risk students from one of deprivation to one of promise. 

Our world is changing more rapidly than we have ever experienced, and it will be up to our students to take over this world now changed forever by COVID-19. 

We don’t have time to wait: our students need an education now. Mississippi’s youth cannot look toward the future if they are unable to access basic things like the internet or a safe classroom. 

Ensuring equitable education for all students regardless of their economic status will lift us all up. For every dollar our government allocates, our young minds of Mississippi will repay tenfold. Jaquavion can become anything and anyone he puts his mind to. He just needs the basic tools in order to do so. 

Alexandra Melnick teaches English language arts at Leland High School. She is a 2020-21 Teach Plus Mississippi policy fellow.