This story is being provided for free as part of a series on childcare during the COVID pandemic, powered by the Solutions Journalism Network and dedicated to delivering solution-oriented stories about problems our community is facing.
PORTSMOUTH – After months of remote learning forced by the unfolding COVID-19 pandemic last spring, school districts around the country approached summer break with a major problem.
Many students had fallen off the bandwagon – uninterested, uninspired, and unable to access the resources they needed to maintain what knowledge they did acquire during the unusual school year. Summer learning loss, schools feared, was about to be compounded by the so-called COVID slide, or the achievement gap related to disrupted education and long-term remote learning.