This Newark charter is offering tutoring to kids, even if they go to district public schools – NJ.com

In June, Metropolitan Baptist Church in Newark organized a virtual conference to discuss the coronavirus pandemic’s impact on the city’s students.

At least one educator rang the alarm bells on learning loss.

“To be honest, it is going to be a great job that we have to tackle,” said Wirmarie Morales, a teacher at Newark Public Schools, during the meeting. “But if we come together as a community we can do it.”

Now, educators and religious leaders in Newark are coming together to do just that. They’ve created a Newark Unites Tutoring Center at Metropolitan Baptist Church on Springfield Avenue.

Borne out of that conference was a plan to combat learning loss. Great Oaks Legacy Charter School is piloting a tutoring program using AmeriCorps members — and it is open to all 9th and 10th graders in the city, even those who attend Newark Public Schools or other charter schools.

“We see a responsibility that we’ve always had to serve the Newark community, even outside of our four walls,” said Great Oaks Legacy Charter School Executive Director Jared Taillefer.

Great Oaks Legacy Charter School, which serves 2,000 pre-K to 12th-grade students, already has a model using one-on-one tutors with every student in grades 3 to 10. Every day, students meet with the same tutor for an entire year. That creates a bond and support system for every child, Taillefer said.

The tutoring will provide 40 to 50 tutors for reading and Algebra at least once a week until December. If there is more interest, Taillefer said the program could expand to run beyond the end of 2021 and provide more tutors.

Metropolitan Baptist Church Rev. David Jefferson said the tutoring program isn’t an end-all-be-all to closing the learning gap from the pandemic, but he said but it’s a step in the right direction.

“This is a huge blessing for families in our community, who would never be able to afford to close that gap with high dosage tutoring because they would not have the money to do it,” said Jefferson, who has been a minister at the church for 26 years. “The trickling effect of that is kids fall behind, they get in trouble, they indeed fall by the wayside. They become a liability as opposed to an asset.”

Educators and others in the June conference forewarned of learning loss, even before Chalkbeat Newark, an education news organization, reported on stark data that quantified the slowed progress of school children in Newark.

Chalkbeat analyzed MAP Growth assessments, which can predict how well students would have done on the canceled state assessments. It found 9% of students in grades 2-8 were expected to reach state expectations in math, and just 11% of those in the same grades met expectations in reading.

Learning loss isn’t just in Newark. It has been a national trend as well, but the inequities have been felt the most among Black, Latino and lower-income students.

The lapse in progress has also been felt in charter schools, said New Jersey Children’s Foundation Executive Director Kyle Rosenkrans.

“What we have heard from school leaders at every school is that learning loss is real, it’s significant — even at charter schools,” said Rosenkrans, who heads a charter-friendly nonprofit that works on diplomacy between charter and traditional public schools. “This is something that affected everybody.”

Newark Public Schools Superintendent Roger León said parents and guardians will receive information about tutoring during the first week of school.

“Every location in the district will serve as a tutoring site, inclusive of Saturday Academies throughout the district,” León told NJ Advance Media.

The AmeriCorps tutors are recent college graduates who are recruited from local colleges and universities, Taillefer said. Students will meet with tutors in short sessions on Thursday and Friday evenings and then longer, three-to-four-hour sessions on Saturdays.

The tentative start date of the tutoring is Sept. 18, with orientation beginning on Sept. 16.

Students will be accepted on a first-come-first-served basis. To register, visit bit.ly/newark-unites-tutoring/.

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Rebecca Panico may be reached at rpanico@njadvancemedia.com.