The scene outside Alief ISD’s Hearne Elementary School could have been mistaken for a party last Wednesday, as Motown music blared on a speaker and teachers danced and waved at students riding by in cars.

The blue latex gloves worn by teachers and medical-grade masks donned by some families hinted at a darker reality, though. With schools temporarily shut down due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, Hearne served as a hub for families to pick up paper packets of coursework, the only way for students without computers or internet access at home to continue their education.

“Are you reading?” Hearne Elementary Principal Johanna Sanchez asked a student before handing him a packet of lessons and worksheets. The boy responded with a mischievous grin.

“You need to be reading,” Sanchez said, smiling. “That’s why we’re giving you this.”

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The lack of access to technology among students — commonly referred to as the “digital divide” — has come into sharper focus in recent weeks as school districts across Houston transition to online-based learning amid widespread school shutdowns.

Districts throughout the region are scrambling to equip tens of thousands of children with computers and internet access, jockeying with each other to secure coveted devices in high demand during the pandemic. In the meantime, many districts are providing those students with rudimentary paper materials, asking families to return completed coursework to their schools or take pictures of completed worksheets and send them to teachers.

“This has been on the education docket for, gosh, probably at least 20 years,” said Alice Owen, executive director of the Texas K-12 CTO Council, an association that supports school district chief technology officers. “It’s been a struggle for people to realize that this is an important piece of learning for students if we want to keep them competitive on a global scale.”

Educators and advocates long have warned about the digital divide facing American children, with the nation’s most impoverished children suffering most. The ubiquity and declining cost of computers and internet access has helped shrink the gap, but stark disparities remain.

In the Houston area’s 10 largest school districts, about 9 percent of households — nearly 142,650 — do not have a computer, according to the most recent U.S. Census estimates. Nearly twice that number — about 267,250 households — lack broadband internet access.

Three of the region’s largest and most impoverished districts — Alief, Aldine and Houston ISDs — face the greatest shortages, according to Census data and estimates from district leaders.

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Aldine officials estimate that 40 percent of the district’s students do not have internet access at home. In Alief, administrators suspect 20 to 25 percent of their students are missing out, prompting them to print more than a million pages of coursework for about 12,000 students last week.

“In the virtual environment, teachers are interacting with children to some degree, and teachers can give immediate feedback to students or semi-immediate feedback,” Alief ISD Executive Director of Curriculum and Instruction Kathy Jahn said. “The challenge with paper packets is that we don’t have that touchpoint with our kids.”

HISD officials did not provide estimates, but Census data suggests about 25 percent of households in the district lack internet access.

A ‘very challenging’ problem

In the wake of school shutdowns, many Houston-area districts have lent computers to families, deploying iPads, Chromebooks and other portable devices typically housed on campuses.

Some districts face a lesser burden because they provide take-home computers to students in middle and high school. HISD, for example, gives HP laptops to all high schoolers, while students in grades 6 through 12 receive computers in Clear Creek and Klein ISDs.

Still, several districts are relying on paper packets amid computer shortages or logistical hurdles. In Cy-Fair ISD, the region’s second-largest district with about 117,000 students, staff members distributed about 25,000 paper packets in the first week without classes, Superintendent Mark Henry said.

“We’re using a lot of different methods to reach students, and in all honesty, we’re still trying to figure it out,” Henry said.

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Even in districts capable of supplying laptops to all students, the lack of internet access in homes continues to hinder online learning.

Officials with KIPP Texas Public Schools, a charter network home to about 29,000 students throughout the state, said they have outfitted nearly all students with computers after delivering about 11,000 Chromebooks since the shutdown. However, KIPP estimates about 4,500 students do not have internet access at home, a challenge in a district that is not providing paper coursework in Houston.

KIPP Texas Chief Operating Officer Kris Cheung said the charter has communicated with AT&T about buying 4,000 portable hotspots for families, at a cost of $40 to $60 per month for internet service. If KIPP completes the purchase, its leaders expect a two- to four-week wait for delivery of the devices.

“It’s been very challenging,” Cheung said. “AT&T is being very responsive, but a lot of other districts and systems are doing the same thing, and inventory is a big concern right now.”

A cost problem

Despite extensive warnings about the digital divide, state and federal legislators have not allocated nearly enough funding to schools to cover costs associated with providing laptops, wireless internet devices and broadband services to all students at home.

Districts can obtain some technology and internet access at steep discounts through a federal program known as E-Rate, but the benefit does not extend to take-home computers or wireless hotspots for students.

“If we want our kids to be competitive and stay up-to-date with tech, we need to be investing in our students for the future,” Owen said. “We’ve got to get over the way school used to be run, and we need to think about the ways that schools are run in the future.”

In a letter sent last week to the top four ranking members of Congress, 35 Democratic senators called for providing $2 billion in E-Rate funds that would allow schools and libraries to deliver wireless internet devices to students without connectivity at home.

“Children without connectivity are at risk of not only being unable to complete their homework during this pandemic, but being unable to continue their overall education,” the senators wrote. “Congress must address this issue by providing financial support specifically dedicated to expanding home Internet access in the next emergency relief package so that no child falls behind in their education.”

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Congressional lawmakers remain in the early stages of crafting a potential fourth coronavirus relief package. It is unclear how many devices could be purchased with $2 billion, in part because wireless hotspots carry recurring costs for internet service.

The need for more technology was evident at Alief’s Hearne Elementary. Less than 90 minutes after nine staffers started handing out paper packets, they ran out of coursework for Spanish-speaking first- and second-grade students.

Some of those picking up the packets lacked internet, while others, like Debbie Kilgore and her 7-year-old grandson, were stuck sharing a desktop while Kilgore worked from home.

Kilgore, a manager at an apartment complex, needs to be on the computer most of the day for bookkeeping and to schedule and log maintenance requests. That leaves little time for Isaiah, her grandson, to get work done online.

“It’s a big help,” Kilgore said of the packets. “The only thing that’s hard for me is that I’m grandma and we didn’t have — they’re learning a lot more than we did when we were little. So, it’s hard.”

jacob.carpenter@chron.com

shelby.webb@chron.com