The problem of racially motivated police violence isn’t necessarily any less pronounced in rural areas, says the head of a community college in Selma, Alabama. Dr. James Mitchell sees hope in the way peaceful young people are responding to the national crisis. Find out more here.

John Ross worries about his children returning to their classrooms this fall with coronavirus cases rising in Kentucky, but he feels he doesn’t have much of a choice: His family’s limited internet access makes it nearly impossible for the kids to keep up with schoolwork from home. Read more from TechWire here.

A long list of groups working on rural issues across the country released statements about protests prompted by the killing of African American citizens by police. Read more on The Daily Yonder via link here.

A surge in worldwide demand by educators for low-cost laptops has created shipment delays and pitted desperate schools against one another. Districts with deep pockets often win out. Read more from The New York Times.

While coronavirus-related closures have renewed the push to close the connectivity gap for rural communities, those initiatives are “disconnected” from the reality on the ground, superintendents say.

The old machines you’re no longer using can help fill the hardware gap for rural students and families. Your community can easily start a similar give-away program. Folks around the southeast Texas city of La Grange will tell you how.

Broadband already powers much of our modern lives, but COVID-19 has acted as an accelerant, a fuel of sorts that has driven many essential activities online. All learning, services, commerce, most workplaces and daily interactions online require a high-speed connection to the internet. Those without access to this online world – more than 18 million Americans with 14 million living in rural areas, according to the Federal Communications Commission – risk falling farther behind. While 18 million is a big number – more than the entire populations of Indiana, Iowa and Tennessee combined – a new study has found that the actual number of people lacking access to broadband in the US is closer to 42 million. Read more from Microsoft here.

Before the pandemic, it was called “the homework gap,” because of the growing number of teachers who assigned homework that required Internet access. Now, as the pandemic forces many schools to switch to remote learning, disconnected students will miss more than homework. They’ll miss all of school. Read more from The Washington Post here.

Students from rural areas historically struggle with college access. And as the coronavirus has shut down high school and college campuses across the country, educators are anxious about their enrollment rates.

Latinos are already disproportionately impacted by coronavirus in Idaho, making up one-third of the state’s coronavirus cases where the race or ethnicity of the patient is known. But stark new data from the state’s health districts show just how hard a recent spike in coronavirus cases is hitting Latinos in rural Idaho.

Read more here: https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/coronavirus/article243044616.html#storylink=cpy

In response to the unprecedented educational challenges created by school closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 90 per cent of countries have implemented some form of remote learning policy. This factsheet estimates the potential reach of digital and broadcast remote learning responses, finding that at least 463 million students around the globe remain cut off from education, mainly due to a lack of remote learning policies or lack of equipment needed for learning at home. Read more from Unicef here.

As the death toll nears 100,000, the disease caused by the virus has made a fundamental shift in who it touches and where it reaches in America, according to a Washington Post analysis of case data and interviews with public health professionals in several states. The pandemic that first struck in major metropolises is now increasingly finding its front line in the country’s rural areas; counties with acres of farmland, cramped meatpacking plants, out-of-the-way prisons and few hospital beds.

America at large is facing two pandemics: racism and COVID-19. But, low-income Black and Brown children in America are facing one more, the temporary and permanent closure of their schools. Read more from EdWeek at the link above.

With just 8,500 people, Hancock has 170 reported cases of COVID-19, the fourth highest number per capita in the state, higher than any county outside the Albany region. On Tuesday a Hancock nursing home reported 14 new deaths to the state Department of Public Health, making the county’s total of coronavirus-related deaths at least 19.

History of systemic inequities from disrupted food systems to extractive industries exploiting native lands hamper tribal response to the coronavirus outbreak, resulting in more deaths among Native Americans. Find more here.

Remote regions with crowded households have turned deadlier than some city blocks, read more from the Wall Street Journal here.

There’s a perception out there that rural residents are less concerned about the pandemic. A national poll says otherwise. Read more from The Daily Yonder reporting here.