Written by Kelly Sales, Director of Development, Brookside Charter School, KCMO
With the COVID pandemic came new challenges and obstacles for schools across the country. Brookside Charter School was not any different. Not one of our staff members learned how to teach or operate a school during a global pandemic in their college years. We were building the plane as we were flying it.
On Thursday, May 12, 2020 we said goodbye to our students and watched them walk out of our doors with a Chromebook and Hotspot in hand. We were planning for a long Spring Break but did not realize it would be 17+ months before we would see them at full capacity in our building again.
Shortly after, we learned of federal funds that would be made available to schools to help with operational costs incurred during this time. As a Charter School in Missouri that is already underfunded compared to our public counterparts, we knew we needed to take advantage of these funds.
Brookside Charter School has a strong culture among its staff and is a very collaborative community. Our administrative team met with our financial institution to look into how these funds could be used. Ultimately, we realized that we needed to invest in our staff above everything else.
In urban education, staff turnover from year to year is high. According to a study from the LatinX Education Collaborative and The Urban Education Research Center, the three-year retention rate for teachers is lowest in Jackson County out of all of the counties in the greater Kansas City area, both on the Missouri and Kansas sides. This means that the likelihood of a child in an urban school being placed with a highly qualified teacher with roots in their school community is low.
We knew that to be able to provide Brookside Charter students with the best education possible, we needed to invest in our staff members to ensure that they stayed in education and returned to Brookside Charter School for the 2021-22 school year.
With these federal funds, additional instructional positions were added to address student needs and learning loss. These positions include Educational Interventionists, Special Education Providers, and Paraprofessionals to support classroom teachers. Despite our best efforts at virtual instruction and our students’ best efforts at virtual learning, we know that our students are going to return to our building with greater instructional needs than what they left with.
The requirements for these federal funds require at least 20% of the funds to be used toward instruction. Brookside Charter School directed nearly all of these funds to be used towards instruction, specifically investing in human capital in our highly qualified staff.
As our students enter Brookside Charter School for the first day of school on August 19th, their parents can rest assured that they will be receiving a quality education provided by highly qualified staff. These students will be met with love and will be surrounded by resources to help them succeed because when schools invest in their staff, everyone wins.
