Chromebooks are not indestructible. On March 13, 2020 students went home without any idea that they would not be back in the building for over a year. We did not have 1-1 Chromebooks, so students left without any way to connect with school. By May 4, 2020 we handed out all the Chromebooks we had on a first come, first serve basis. Many of the Chromebooks had missing keys, cracked screens, or had any number of other reasons why they could not be used by our students with ease. The District did have several centers set up for families to visit to get these fixed and even had new Chromebooks to distribute to those not fortunate enough to obtain one through our school. However, we quickly realized there were many barriers to our families getting to these centers. These included transportation, childcare, language, and just the lack of understanding about the process. I worked with classroom teachers to find the greatest needs, and then I went down to the District Headquarters building and was able to acquire 25 Chromebooks for students and deliver them throughout the city. However, something else had to be done because there were substantially more students that needed Chromebooks than I was able to acquire myself.

I worked with families, classroom teachers, and our social work team to gather families' stories of what barriers existed to obtaining a Chromebook or getting their Chromebook fixed at one of the District sites. After all my qualitative and quantitative data was collected, I petitioned my principal to start a dialogue with her supervisor for a solution to this equity issue. The Assistant Superintendent for our Neighborhood Network agreed that we needed to get Chromebooks into the hands of our students more quickly. Within 24 hours, the school district dropped off 340 Chromebooks for our students that did not have one. I was then able to distribute those Chromebooks to our students at the school.

Now that we had Chromebooks, our students needed internet access. Again, I worked with classroom teachers, families, and social workers to gather anecdotal evidence of the barriers our families had to internet access. I worked with the United Way, the Mayor's office, the Philadelphia Academy of School Leaders (sponsored by the Neubaurer Family Foundation), and Comcast to problem solve barriers to families calling the 2-1-1 hotline to get connected in internet. I called 2-1-1 myself as a potential customer to traverse the path our families had to travel to obtain internet. I found there were no options in Spanish, incongruences between what the supporters thought the criteria for eligibility was and the actual criteria, and a large loophole excluding our students from eligibility if their older sibling attended a charter school. I worked with volunteers from Comcast and our social work team to call with families when they called 2-1-1 to limit the amount of confusion involved with the process.