Schools across New York have been charged with curating information on access to digital resources at home as the state looks to enhance education equity and ensure all students are equally prepared for virtual learning methods in the future.

In the COVID-19 pandemic, Monique Hill, mother to Edith, Ezra and Eva, said it was challenging to support the digital demands of her three children's education; something she has not been alone in.

"We had to start doing work on the computers and stuff. We didn't have computers in our house; We had one that was my mom's,” said Edith, a high school senior.

What You Need To Know

  • NYSED is requiring schools to send out a digital equity survey to all families of school children

  • Since the spring of 2020, most districts have sent out at least three surveys

  • School districts with the greatest need for computer and internet support have the lowest responses to the surveys

  • The 2021-2022 digital equity surveys should be completed and back to NYSED by August 2022

“It was very hard because we all had classes around the same time," said fifth-grader Ezra.

“We all had different work. We're all in different grades. So one computer was hard and we just had to do [with] what we had," said seventh grader Eva.

Managing the children, all at different grade levels, proved to be a sort of juggling act, according to Hill. It's exactly the sort of struggle this survey hopes to uncover and resolve.

“It just was chaos in the morning. Sometimes the children had classes at the same time. Sometimes they didn't,” said Hill.

Donna Marie Norton is the executive director for data accountability and school improvement for the North Syracuse Central School District. She is overseeing their digital equity survey that is being required by the New York State Department of Education for all school districts.

“So, if you have multiple students in a family and we give you one Chromebook, then the students have to share that device. That doesn't work because you've got multiple kids that are trying to get on multiple times. Mom and dad might have been working from home," said Norton.

“We argued, but we worked it out," said Eva.

“There were days where we weren't able to get on the Zooms and get our work done,” Edith adds.

The state education department survey has been sent out multiple times this school year and last, and Norton says statewide responses are low. The nine questions are to see how many students don't have access to devices or the internet. The survey may give some parents pause at first.

“As a parent, I kinda was like, are we shutting down again? They kind of put a little bit of fear in me but they just wanted to know where parents stood,” says Hill.

The education department says, so far, data shows that hundreds of thousands of New York students still do not have access to a device appropriate for learning or sufficient broadband access at home. They want to use the data from the digital equity survey to end the digital divide, saying digital equity is essential for educational equity.

“I think those numbers are probably underreported because the parents," said Norton, "It was a voluntary survey. So this year, I think we're going to see more inequity and the state ED is really working hard to fix that. It was very difficult for some families most of it was cost for the suburban school districts for the rural school districts it was availability.”

“It impacted me academically because when I couldn't do my work, my grades would go down and I wouldn't get the grade that I wanted," said Eva.

School districts and families have until August to complete and collect the digital equity survey.