Summer break gave school leaders time to reflect on the lessons of the spring and create more effective reopening plans for the fall. But, because the federal government left reopening plans to the states, which passed the task on to districts, which in many cases left the details to individual principals, students across the country are experiencing vastly different schooling scenarios.

I spoke to students, who shared their struggles and ideas for improvement. Here are their insights.

Protect children and their families from coronavirus

“It felt like a hot mess … The schools aren’t built to have students separated, so there was no way we could really [socially] distance. In a lot of the classes, I saw teachers trying to space it out the best way they could, but there’s certain classes, there was absolutely no way around it.”

Make remote learning more meaningful

“ … I think the teachers just got tired or they forgot how important it is to try to keep the students engaged, or maybe it was just because they had to change their learning, but they would send a video to you and say, ‘Hey, here’s what you’ll be doing. I posted an assignment in [Google] Classroom. Go do it. It’s due on this day.’”

Make antiracism a part of the curriculum

Camille Fei, who attended a Black Lives Matter protest in Charleston and organized her own in her neighborhood, said her school does not address current events at all, let alone the racial turmoil of the summer. “They didn’t touch on the Black Lives Matter movement or anything that happened at all,” she said about her school, which has a student body that is 56 percent white, 33 percent Black and 5 percent Hispanic. “That’s definitely something I’m looking to change.”

Read the full article about what students are saying about school during COVID-19 by Magdalena Slapik at The Hechinger Report.