L2R Spotlight

A multi-tiered approach

“If only we could test the students ourselves!”

Shauna Edwards whispered these words to herself, morning after morning, as she watched her students walk through the doors in the days before Lumen High School had their own COVID-19 testing program. At that time, Edwards, the Founder and Executive Director of Lumen, and her team were doing everything they could to help students access COVID testing despite the transportation challenges they often faced. Sometimes that meant driving students to drive-through testing sites, sometimes it meant connecting them to testing sites in bigger school districts.

It wasn’t easy. But both groups were focused on the mission: keep Lumen open. Lumen High School is a safe space for students in a world full of challenges, choices, and responsibilities that most of their peers don’t have to think about – because the students at Lumen High School are also parents. Lumen provides educational opportunities to pregnant and parenting high school students, while simultaneously supporting their children through a partnership with a high-quality Early Learning Center.

At Lumen, high school kids, who also happen to be moms and dads, don’t have to choose between the two roles. They can be both, and they’re surrounded by a community of other kids facing the same challenges. There are, inevitably, barriers – barriers to attendance, barriers to learning, barriers to focusing, and – some days – barriers to staying awake. At Lumen, 50% of the student body face homelessness or are considered unaccompanied youth. 

COVID was just one more barrier on an already long list. So when Edwards learned about the Learn to Return COVID-19 testing program in the summer of 2021, she was all in. But she needed to figure out the logistics. Edwards worked closely with her Learn to Return Program Manager, Samantha Lara, to navigate the muddled early days: How do we encompass our students and their children into our testing program? Can we test our students’ children? Can we test their families? Together, Edwards and Lara designed a testing program tailored to the unique needs of the Lumen community. As a result, the Lumen testing program doesn’t just focus on the student body, it extends to families and entire living systems.

“We do a multi-tiered approach to testing,” Edwards explains, “We provide onsite testing for any of our students or their family members who have symptoms. We view our testing program as a resource for the whole community. We believe that testing families helps all educational providers in the county because we can identify cases and try to stop them from spreading into other schools as well.”

It makes sense that the testing program at Lumen extends beyond the students to alleviate a barrier they face and better meet their needs – that’s the whole premise of the school itself. If a student is struggling to attend, there’s counseling. If a student is struggling to focus, there’s mental health support. Struggling to make ends meet? WIC resources. Struggling to stay awake? Nap room. Lumen is a place designed to help students thrive despite the challenges they face outside of the classroom.

Making students feel safe

In the 2020 school year, Lumen’s inaugural year, the team made four different learning models work – they started on Zoom, went to one day a week, then two, then small cohorts returned to in-person learning. Throughout the year, the staff delivered weekly meal and project kits directly to students’ homes, supporting them in every way possible during a deeply uncertain time.

When students returned to school full time in fall 2021, there was a lot of fear. Edwards watched as students grappled with the uncertainty: Am I safe here? Can I be here? Is my child safe?  

“For our students, having access to COVID-19 testing for them and their families was a big deal,” Edwards explains. “It really matters if our student’s 3-year-old has COVID – because if the Early Learning Center shuts down, it also shuts down our student’s access to school. That’s why the testing program is so important.” 

This inclusive and comprehensive testing program has allowed Lumen High School to weather the COVID pandemic with only minor learning interruptions. Since they started in-school testing, Lumen has never had to do a full school closure, and only needed to close the Early Learning Center once for four days plus a weekend.

“We take COVID super seriously because a school closure could have a lot of impact on our students,” says Edwards, “It could be that one thing that breaks their progress. If a student is out for 10 days – we might not see them again.”

While Lumen does have access to Curative PCR testing, rapid antigen tests have been the most effective tool to quickly identify cases and avoid outbreaks. Additionally, Lumen follows DOH recommendations as if they were rules. Lumen still has an active test to stay program (with tests on days 3 and 5, or at the onset of symptoms) and conducts whole-class testing when the need arises. But it’s not just the testing that has allowed them to stay open. Edwards explains, “The testing was a piece of it – but the questioning and case investigation was also a big piece of it. We put a lot of time into that, asking students: What are your symptoms? What else is going on? Who else were you around?”

From the beginning of the testing program, the Lumen team has been candid and honest in their communications with students: Our mission is to stay open so we can support you, and to do that we need to have a strict and intentional testing program. In addition to clear communications, COVID education has been integrated into day-to-day life – in science class, students learn about the science of COVID. In visits to the medical clinic, students learn about the impact of COVID on young people and kids. “The students take their child’s health really seriously. They don’t like it when the flu goes around the Early Learning Center because they all get sick. We look at COVID in the same way – it’s just another thing we need to prevent.”

Any hesitation that some students might have felt about testing in the beginning faded away once students saw the benefit. Now, students ask, “If my auntie and all my cousins can get here, can you test them?” Edwards smiles, “We say – sure! That’s been our approach to testing – if there’s a case, we’re trying to make sure we’re slowing or stopping the spread. We’d rather be proactive than reactive. This is the students’ safest place – where they have food and support – testing is how we can all be here.”

You belong here

The idea for Lumen grew out of the gap in educational opportunities that Edwards witnessed everyday when she ran a non-profit providing mentoring and support groups for pregnant teens. The teens didn’t have the resources to be fully a parent, and didn’t have the time to be fully a student. “Knowing what they were getting up everyday and doing – it’s so amazing and hard,”Edwards said. “We wanted them to have a place where they could be successful and feel proud of what they are doing.” 

One of the many ways that Lumen achieves that is by fostering a culture of belonging. It’s written on the wall in the main office for students to see every day: You belong here. And it’s not just words. Lumen allows students to fully inhabit being a student and being a parent. The school identifies barriers, and works to alleviate them – so students not only want to be there, but can be there – consistently. The ethos of belonging is seen in the holistic support available to each student, in the way faculty go above and beyond to spend time with students, and in their shared goal during COVID – doing whatever it takes to stay open.

Now, Edwards works with her Learn to Return Program Manager, Ruaa Elkhair, to maintain the COVID testing program. “The reality of COVID is that it could have been a huge barrier to our students because of quarantine situations, so having the test to stay program on site was a huge opportunity,” Edwards explains. “Our testing success story is that our students, who often have many barriers to attendance, actually had increased attendance from their previous schools in the 2021-2022 school year.”

“By having testing, we were able to provide a safe, consistent space for our students to be each day. The dominant narrative around teen parents is that they drop out or don’t want to go to school – and what we have shown is just the opposite, when you provide a space that is attuned to the layered needs of parenting teens so they can be both a parent and student, they will thrive and attend school more.”