When school starts back up for kids in Lanesville Community Schools, Rebecca Uesseler won’t be logging on from home like most of her students.

Uesseler will make the 15-mile drive from her home in New Middletown – population 93 – to Lanesville Elementary School.

“I have some internet,” Uesseler said of her home, which sits on 15 acres near Indiana’s southern border, surrounded by rolling farm land. “It’s just not a strong signal. It’s spotty.”

That won’t be good enough to do the kind of eLearning Lanesville schools – both of them – are planning to do while schools across the state of Indiana are ordered closed.

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Gov. Eric Holcomb last week directed all schools to stay closed until at least May 1. The order could be extended, he said, through the end of the school year.

So, while her colleagues are “social distancing” by teaching their classes from home and her students complete assignments from their kitchen tables, Uesseler will be inside her empty classroom – making use of the school’s strong internet connection to record video lessons for her fifth graders.

“It will be very, very odd,” she said.

Poor connectivity

Poor connectivity continues to be a challenge for online learning in America’s rural communities.

This issue is not a new one, but it is coming into sharper focus as the vast majority of the country’s schools close in response to the spread of COVID-19.

Amelia Ross can do her school work from home — she just has to make sure no one else is online first.

"We have internet," Amelia said of her home in Milton, a hamlet in rural eastern Indiana. "It's just very slow. If anybody else in the house is on the internet, it's really hard to do things."

Amelia is a junior at Connersville High School, 12 miles down the road from her home. Like all of Indiana's schools, Connersville is closed until at least May 1, meaning she will be doing her school work through her slow home internet for another month.

Lisa Ross, Amelia's mom, has called their internet service provider to see if they can improve their home network. They were supposed to be out earlier this week, she said.

"I'm guessing they've been in inundated," she said. "I'm going to give them another week."

With patience, Amelia can download the assignments her teachers post online. And if no one else is online — including an older brother, Owen, who is also trying to do his college school work from home — she can manage a video chat with a teacher.

When Owen, in his sophomore year at Ball State University, had a test last week, everyone had to be sure and stay off their computers while he took it.

Owen's older brother stayed at his off-campus house at Butler University, in part, because the internet at home wouldn't have been able to support all three students working remotely.

"It would've been too hard," Lisa Ross said.

For Owen and Amelia, the situation has been manageable but it's not ideal. In the past, Amelia said they would've gone to the public library to use the internet there but that's not an option, either.

"Everything is closed," she said.

'It’s not ideal'

In all likelihood, millions of America’s schoolchildren won’t be back in a classroom with their teacher until the fall and experts are worried about wide-scale learning loss in rural communities without the infrastructure to support online learning and in low-income communities, where families can’t necessarily afford the digital devices kids need to do school at home.

Steve Morris, superintendent in Lanesville where Rebecca Uesseler teaches, said roughly 10% of his 750 students don’t have internet access at home. Teachers are creating paper packets to be picked up from school for families that need them but he’s already heard from several parents worried about how their kids will keep up.

In Clinton Central schools, superintendent Al Remaly surveyed his families and found that 12% don’t have internet access at home.

When they’ve done eLearning in the past – a day here and there during bad weather – some students have driven to the school parking lot, downloaded the assignments on their digital devices from their cars and gone home to complete the work.

“It’s not ideal,” Remaly said, "but it’s the best solution we have at this time."

Right now, the district is planning to do three days of eLearning each week and utilize the waiverthe governor gave schools – giving them the freedom to meet for fewer than the state-mandated 180 instructional days per school year. Right now, schools can waive up to 20 days but state officials have already said that may change as some districts grapple with how to handle the extended closure.

Chris Lagoni, executive director of the Indiana Small and Rural Schools Association, said about half of the school districts he represents are “one to one,” meaning the district has one digital device – like an iPad or Chromebook – for every student.

“Some are doing eLearning, some aren’t,” he said. “Some are doing packets. Some are trying to figure it out.”

Connectivity, he said, will continue to be the biggest issue for rural schools trying to implement long-term eLearning strategies.

Widening gaps

The move to eLearning – and the inherent inequity it is creating for access to education – is raising concerns for groups that see a prolonged closure of schools as the breeding ground for wider achievement gaps and greater learning loss.

Kids from low-income and rural communities, where access to resources and opportunities is lowest, are most susceptible, said Shane Garver, senior director of Save the Children’s rural education program. Low-income kids start school behind their more affluent peers – a gap that gets compounded during summer breaks when kids lose up to three months’ worth of learning.

“This summer, we’re heading into could be the longest summer of kids’ lives,” said Shane Garver, senior director of Save the Children’s rural education program.

While schools are trying their best during coronavirus-related closures, even eLearning done well likely won’t be as effective as in-person teaching said Dave Hua, a computer technology researcher at Ball State.

“It’s not that everyone is incapable of doing this effectively,” Hua said. “It’s whether or not we are prepared to do this effectively immediately.

“I think, in time, yes, everybody is going to get up to speed. But it’s going to take time, it’s going to take resources and a lot of creativity on the part of the educators.”

Not just a rural problem

The eLearning gap doesn’t just exist in rural communities. Urban schools can also struggle to make online learning work – more often because families in their communities can’t afford home internet or the electronic devices students need to complete the work.

In Indianapolis Public Schools, teachers are putting together paper packets of materials for students to do at home, on their own.

Melissa Leonard said her son, a senior at Washington Township’s North Central High School, has been playing video games since his school closed last week.

Washington Township is another district that, so far, has used waiver days provided by the governor rather than attempting eLearning. In its guidance for completing home learning activities that teachers are providing to keep kids engaged but won’t be graded, the district included a map of free WiFi locations.

Leonard said she told her son about the “continued learning” opportunities.

His response: “Yeah right, mom.”

“I’m battling senioritis,” Leonard said.

Leonard said she understands the challenge facing Washington Township Schools, but she’s still frustrated seeing private schools and more affluent public districts moving forward with online classes.

“What happens if the school is closed for the rest of the year?” she wondered.

Most school districts are still trying to figure that out.

At a press conference last week, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jennifer McCormick said the state is still collecting data about access to online learning and how it varies from one district to the next. There are some districts, she said, that won’t have the capacity to move classes online.

“There is a gap,” she said, “and I'm not going to pretend that there’s not one.”

Call IndyStar education reporter Arika Herron at 317-201-5620 or email her at Arika.Herron@indystar.com. Follow her on Twitter: @ArikaHerron.