For the past several years, while the state as a whole has been largely red, Hillsborough County has turned blue. It’s been blue for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, and Hillary Clinton in 2016.  Demographic changes are at least partly to blame: This year, Hillsborough County has 366,337 registered Democrats, and just 292,706 registered Republicans. But there are still 275,303 people who fall into the category of “Others”—almost a third of the population—and while the Democrats are mobilizing for Biden this year, Trump supporters are determined to take the county back. The national focus on Florida as an electoral prize has only made them more determined to turn Hillsborough red again: Most poll-watchers agree that Trump will lose the election if he doesn’t win Florida, and for the last 100 years, no Republican has made it to the White House without winning in the state.

The challenge for local politicians in Tampa, especially in a pandemic, is to reach these “Others” in the changing political landscape. Congresswoman Kathy Castor, the Democratic incumbent running for her eighth term in office, has held her congressional seat in Tampa also in part due to the political shift in Tampa that has occurred within the past decade. “Hillsborough County interestingly has really trended Democratic over the past ten years,” said Castor, who credits the popularity of Barack Obama and the county’s increases demographic diversity for this change. (As of 2018, Tampa’s population was 44.6% white, 25.7% Latino, 22.7% Black, and 4.2% Asian.) She argues that the local Democratic party is more in line with the worldview of most residents here. “Democratic values speak to families and small business owners more than the GOP right now,” she said.

Naturally, that view isn’t shares by Castor’s opponent, Republican Christine Quinn, a pro-life Trump supporter with an A rating from the NRA. If there is a red wave in Tampa this year, Quinn hopes to ride it. Quinn and her campaign manager, Allison Clay, have been going to Republican organization events in Tampa that specifically target diverse voters. “You’ve got Black Voices for Trump, you have Latinos for Trump, you have Vietnamese Americans for Trump, Asian Americans for Trump,” said Clay. “We’ve been very involved routinely with all these different groups and organizations. That really helps with our platform of being able to reach these additional people, so they understand who we are.”

This isn’t these candidates’ first faceoff. Quinn lost the 2016 congressional race to Castor, and she only enter this year’s race in April when she learned that Castor was going to be running unopposed. Despite the novel coronavirus, Quinn is still out talking with potential voters. At the grassroots level, her staff has noticed some tension among voters. “People shared with me their fears of putting up a Trump sign in their yard for retaliation from their neighbors,” said Clay. “They don’t want to be hassled—they don’t want to have any issues affecting their home or their safety—but they do tell you that they have voted for him, and they do widely support him, and they do plan on voting down the ticket.”

Clay believes that if they can mobilize this silent majority, the Quinn campaign can pull off an upset. “I really think she can [win],” Clay said. “The No Party Affiliation (NPA) voters—typically, they do tend to vote on the conservative level. You have just as many NPAs registered here in Tampa as you do in Democrats.” Republicans alone could do the job for Trump in Tampa, Clay noted, if they all turned out to vote. “We’re not getting these voters to show up. If we got every registered Republican to show up, vote down the ballot, Christine would win.”

But is the Quinn camp’s view of Tampa realistic or just optimistic?  Mary Anderson—a professor of political science at The University of Tampa who has been studying these races for years—is skeptical. “We know the data point to incumbents winning at very high margins unless they are involved in some sort of scandal, or voters are disillusioned with the job they are doing,” she said. “But by all accounts, Kathy Castor has a wide approval rating.” She said Castor works with her Republican colleagues like Gus Bilirakis, who represents the northern part of Hillsborough and neighboring Pinellas County. Bilirakis and Castor have crossed party lines several times to introduce legislature, including in 2016 for the ACE Kids Act which streamlined medical services and reduced the hardships on the children, in 2017 for the Medicare Civil and Criminal Penalties Update Act which updated the punishments for Medicare fraud, and in 2018 for closing“zombie campaign” loopholes. “She does well by this county,” said Anderson. “Plus, she has name recognition and that’s really the golden ticket in terms of the incumbency advantage…I think it will eventually come down to her unseating herself.”

Party battles aside, one issue that is bound to affect this year’s race is poverty, which plagues residents of Hillsborough County and Tampa harder than other counties of its size and metropolitan status. For 2018, the overall poverty rate was over 19%. The voters in areas outside of The City of Tampa, often go red, but it still may not be so cut-and-dry on November 3^rd. “I think we are waiting to see what’s going to happen in the suburbs here in 2020,” said Anderson. “The city tends to vote blue, tends to be much more Democratic. The rural areas, the suburban areas, and the outer part of the county tend to vote more Republican, and they tend to be red. And there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that suburban voters, particularly women, are—in this election anyway—looking to the Democratic party rather than the Republican party. Now whether that is a reflection of the top of the ticket with Donald Trump, I don’t know. We’re going to have to wait and see how that goes.”

Casey Bauer is the Florida data director for NextGen America, the nonprofit progressive advocacy group founded by Tom Steyer that educates and mobilizes young Americans. Since the pandemic, Bauer has been reaching these young voters virtually. “Tampa, I really think, is a microcosm of the nation as a whole,” Bauer said, in how it “really captures the new growing divide in America between cities and rural areas…In 2008, it voted for Barack Obama, but we still had Republicans elected to county office.” Bauer, like Anderson, believes that tides will continue to shift in Tampa and that this race is just one more chapter in that story. “The Hillsborough as we know of 2020,” he said, “is not going to be recognizable to the Hillsborough of 2024.”

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“My mother had a health complication and my dad who was living in Florida, in Orlando, he got us a ticket for our entire family to leave the island,” said Nava Alsina. “We couldn’t stay in the island if my mom was not able to get the medicine she needed.”

Nava Aslina still remembers the day Trump visited the island and threw rolls of paper towels to hurricane survivors, an action that has snowballed along with the various negative comments Trump has said about the island, which left many Puerto Ricans unhappy with the Trump administration.  

“For us, it was a complete lack of respect to the people,” said Nava Alsina “It’s just something that you don’t do. I wasn’t expecting him to go that low.” 

The Category 5 hurricane tore through the island leaving it without electricity or water for months and an estimated death toll of 1,427.  But Hurricane Maria was just one of the many disasters the island has confronted in the past years. In 2019, the island was hit by governmental corruption and underwent a tumultuous transition in  after people took to the streets to protest against then governor Ricardo Roselló. Throughout the beginning of 2020, earthquakes began shaking different parts of the island, destroying homes and damaging an already fragile power grid.

With the Puerto Rican population on the island shrinking dramatically since the landfall of Maria, Florida has become a key battleground state for the 2020 presidential election. Both candidates have been competing to win over the Latino vote in the state and Puerto Ricans have proven to be a key demographic there, making up 27% of the overall eligible Latino voters in the state.  

Nava Alsina has been working with the Florida Democratic Party to mobilize the Puerto Rican vote in the state. As part of a group called Boricuas con Biden, Nava Alsina has helped make over 60,000 calls to Puerto Rican voters. The group, which is led by volunteers, has also relied on text messaging initiatives, zoom calls and Puerto Rican artists to motivate voters. 

While working on this initiative, Nava Alsina has had the chance to listen to what many Puerto Ricans have to say about Hurricane Maria and  the Trump administration handled the aftermath of the storm on the island. 

Natascha Otero, founder of Boricuas con Biden, said  that Florida is a key state for the Puerto Rican vote because most  have close ties to the island. Some have  family members who still live on the island or they fled to the state  after the hurricane. Otero said  these Puerto Ricans still recall what the island went through the past four years.

As part of the  group’s initiative, Puerto Rican voters speak with fellow Puerto Ricans who are still on the island over the phone. This process has been a key element when campaigning. Especially now that their efforts are limited to social media, texts and phone calls due to Covid-19. 

“As opposed to other groups, we know what Puerto Rico has suffered because of the Trump administration,” said Otero. “We don’t want four more years of that for the island.” 

But there’s still a group that favors president Trump’s reelection. Among them are top officials that form part of Puerto Rico’s local government.  The island’s appointed governor, Wanda Vázquez Garced, endorsed Trump during an interview with Telemundo. Nayda Venegas Brown, a conservative senator who’s a member of the New Progressive Party (PNP) on the island, participated in a caravan to support president Trump in Puerto Rico. 

Puerto Ricans participate in a “Puerto Ricans for Trump” rally held in Puerto Rico. Photo provided by Nelson Albino

But the efforts from the island to try and branch out to Puerto Rican voters in the diaspora has been from both sides. For the first time in 50 years, the island’s main newspaper, El Nuevo Día, endorsed a presidential candidate; it was Joe Biden. The editorial piece highlighted Biden’s plans for the island if elected and condemned the way President Trump has behaved towards the island describing the way Puerto Rico has been treated by his administration as, “an overwhelming amount of inattention, disdain and prejudice against our people.” 

But there is not much either of them can do except hope that the message gets through to Puerto Ricans who live on the mainland. Why? Because Puerto Ricans on the island cannot vote in the presidential elections due to the island’s territorial status.  However,  that  has not discouraged Puerto Ricans on the island to stand behind the candidates they support, especially in an election that puts so much at stake.

Nelson Albino, a co-founder of Puerto Ricans for Trump, has been clear in his support for president Trump’s reelection even though he cannot vote for him. Albino was also one of the organizers of the Puerto Ricans for Trump caravan in which Venegas Brown participated.

“I wanted to send a message to the political establishment in the island that there are Republicans in Puerto Rico who no longer believe the lies of the establishment and the media, and also to send a message to the national Republican leadership that there are conservatives in Puerto Rico,” said Albino.  

For Albino, the way the Trump administration managed the aftermath of Hurricane María was mostly influenced by  the island’s history with corruption, an ongoing problem. He said  that many politicians on the island have an axe to grind with president Trump because of the way he “drained the swamp” in the Puerto Rican government. Albino also believes that statehood for Puerto Rico is not an option for the island in the foreseeable future because Puerto Rico is simply not ready to become a state. 

But regardless of the opposition many Puerto Ricans have shown against the Trump administration, Albino is optimistic that president Trump will win the reelection and continue to do the work that he believes has helped the island progress and move forward. 

“I believe he will be elected,” said Albino

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A statue of Toussaint Louverture stands tall on the corner of 62^nd and North Miami Avenue. Considered a father of the Haitian Revolution, the vigilant figure watches over the now rather quiet neighborhood. Still grappling with rampant gentrification and the coronavirus, many shops have gone out of business, sidewalks are scarcely populated, and the Cultural Complex, the center of Little Haiti’s cultural happenings, remains closed until further notice.

Louverture’s revolutionary bravery often overshadows that of Dutty Boukman – a West African Maroon leader and Vodou priest brought to the shores of the then French colony from Jamaica. On the 14^th night of August 1791, Boukman helped lead a religious ceremony, which would ignite the 12-year Haitian Revolution that resulted in Haiti’s independence. Although religious institutions in South Florida have been limited during the pandemic, many of the community’s practitioners of Haitian Vodou continue their reverence.

“You see this, Papa [Legba], he’s the one at the gate, he’s the one that has to let you in for anything spiritual,” explains priestess Marie Lebrun, pointing at a figurine at the front of her store, Twa Zom Fo Botanica.

Haitian Vodou derives from religious traditions of present day Benin, Tobo, and Nigeria, in which followers believe in a supreme creator and many intermediary spirits or deities who influence the facets of human life and death. Through the transatlantic slave trade, these spirits became known as loas and even took on the faces of Roman Catholic saints, as varying African languages, traditions, and spiritual practices merged with those of Europe. This was not only syncretism, but it was also a means of disguise and survival.

“No business from the tourists right now,” says Laider André, Vodou priest and owner of 3×3 Santa Barbara Botánica. “Sometimes you can find 2-3-5, but in the beginning it was a lot – 20, 25. Tourists always come here everyday, and right now, no.”

Botánicas, or shops in which herbs, candles, figurines, and other religious needs are sold, can be found on many corners around Little Haiti. Often playing Kompa or Rasin music on speakers, they attract tourists and practitioners alike.

“We have artisana, we have things people like to buy,” says Lebrun. “Tourists can come buy some stuff. But for the pandemic, we don’t have that many people.”

Lebrun attributes the significant slowing of her small business to a lack of visitors to Miami during these times.

“I’m going to go for the loan, but I haven’t get it yet,” Lebrun says. “Someone start it for me and it was really great, but it was finished when they finished for me. I didn’t get it.”

Both André and Lebrun have been in business for almost 20 years, but during the past six months, some visitors in the community have sought their help for an unusual reason – to combat the pandemic.

“They have been coming for the virus,” says Lebrun. As a Vodou priestess it is a duty of hers to help the sick.

“You have to get blessing hands to help somebody,” she says. “It’s not something you can buy.”

Priests and priestesses, or houngans and manbos are ordained with many roles in their religious communities. They provide herbal remedies, spiritual guidance, lead rituals and ceremonies, and serve as messengers between the spirits and humans beings.

“You have to be gifted from your mom’s stomach before you’re born,” says Lebrun. “When you get a certain age, when they want you to serve, then you start seeing some things. They keep telling you what to do next…until you get there. And when you get to work, they ask you to work.”

With the virus limiting physical contact, houngans and manbos are finding other ways to deliver their messages.

“If you’re meeting with a priest or priestess a lot of things are done via video call or text message,” Vodouist and folkloric dancer Tanayiz Bertrand says over the phone. “Instead of them doing it for you, they give you the instructions on doing certain things for you to do it yourself, and so things are done virtually.”

Bertrand grew up in a household in which both of her parents were professional and folkloric dancers. She says religious group practices have reasonably changed during the pandemic, as group meetings now happen both virtually and partially in-person.

“If I was in a société, in a specific society or spiritual house we would get together on certain days and talk about our experiences and take notes and just talk about our daily life; things that we’re experiencing, anything that we need to learn as far as rituals and what they mean and everything with all the materials that are being used in different rituals,” says Bertrand. “And also history lessons, because in Vodou, even when it comes to folklore dance, there’s a history lesson behind all of these things.”

Music and dance play an important role in Haitian Vodou. Along with offerings and vèvès, or symbols associated with each loa, music and dance are used to invite loas to join rituals and ceremonies via the body of a practitioner. Vodouists believe they may have direct communication through the physical embodiment of a loa.

“If you’re going to a dans, which is a ceremony, you come with your mask on and they limit the amount of people,” she says. “Also there have been times where you probably had to cancel a ceremony.”

Bertrand says travel restrictions have hindered ceremonies, but most home practices have remained untouched.

“Every morning before I leave my house I jete d’lo or pour libations to acknowledge my ancestors,” manbo and owner of Ayizan’s Corner, Tracy Lotus Badesi wrote in an email. “I continue to pray every day, light a candle in honor of Zanzet Yo (Ancestors) and let them guide my walk through these uncertain times.”

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 Patients who have taken remdesivr, have shown improvement in their condition over a quicker period of time.

 “Remdesivr has a clear cut significant positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery,” Fauci said at a corporate executive meeting at the White House.

 According to the New York Times, Remdesivr could be the first drug to be approved for the treatment of the coronavirus by the Food and Drug Administration, as there are no alternative drugs that have proven to be effective in treating the virus.

 The news of the treatment drug has sent positive signals to investors, with the S&P 500 gaining almost 3% in shares.

 Despite this, the World Health Organization has not yet made comments on the drug, saying that it is too early to see whether or not it will be effective in treating the virus.

Florida will reopen on Monday

 Governor Ron DeSantis plans to reopen Florida on Monday with hard-hit regions including Miami Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach Counties remaining in lockdown.

 “The only thing we have to fear is letting fear overwhelm our sense of purpose and determination,” DeSantis said.

 The governor believes that the best way forward is to reopen the state in phases. The first phase, which will be executed on Monday, allowing small businesses such as restaurants and retail stores to operate at 25 percent indoor capacity. Schools will remain remote, visits to age care centers will still be prohibited. Bars, gyms, and other social venues will remain closed.

 Florida currently has almost 35,000 confirmed cases, and their testing still lags behind nationally.

 In contrast, New York, one of the worst-hit states by the coronavirus, does not plan to reopen until 30 percent of hospital beds and ICU beds are available after elective surgeries resume and that there is no significant increase in hospitalization and diagnostic testing around the state.

 Bill de Blasio causes outrage amongst the Jewish community in New York City

 New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio sparked outrage amongst the Jewish community in the city after condemning Hasidic funeral-goers on twitter for failing to follow social distancing guidelines.  About 2,500 ultra-Orthodox Jewish men were mourning the death of  Rabbi Chaim Mertz. They stood shoulder to shoulder and did not practice social distancing guidelines.

 “My message to the Jewish community, and all communities, is this simple: the time for warnings has passed. I have instructed the NYPD to proceed immediately to summons or even arrest those who gather in large groups. This is about stopping this disease and saving lives. Period,” the Mayor said on twitter.

 In response to the tweet, The Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council called the mayor bigoted for generalizing and pointing fingers at an entire community over the mistakes of the mourners.

 “Even if no leader took a stance, it is bigoted to generalize a community; especially the same day that thousands of New Yorkers failed to social distance to watch a flyover.” The OJPAC said in a tweet.

Hey @NYCMayor, there are 1mil+ Jewish people in #NYC. The few who don’t social distance should be called out — but generalizing against the whole population is outrageous especially when so many are scapegoating Jews. This erodes the very unity our city needs now more than ever. https://t.co/jcYO9QQred

— Jonathan Greenblatt (@JGreenblattADL) April 29, 2020

 The Mayor  later apologized for his tweet during a press conference.

“People’s lives were in danger before my eyes and I was not going to tolerate it,” he said. “I regret if the way I said it in any way gave people a feeling of being treated the wrong way, that was not my intention. It was said with love, but it was tough love, it was anger and frustration.”

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Cynthia Ryalls-Clephane, 69, has been a school counselor in Pasco since 1992. There are countless cases, she said, of parents too high to even discuss their child’s well-being. She has seen students unable and unwilling to focus on their exams because their mom overdosed the night before and they were placed into a stranger’s home in the middle of the night. The teachers she works with are just getting more stressed, overwhelmed and defeated. They want to help, but the district and parents expect them to be foster parents, behavioral specialists, social workers, school counselors, personal tutors, life coaches and babysitters — on top of simply trying to teach students a basic curriculum between the hours of 8 a.m. and 3 p.m.      

 “I get kids that come to school who are homeless living in the woods. … Many times kids want to be at school because this is the safest place,” said Ryalls-Clephane. “I think about a variety of children that I’ve talked to teachers about. They feel helpless because the drugs are causing so many problems.”

Throughout the year, Child Protective Investigations receives approximately 7,500 allegations of child abuse and neglect. Most of those reports are submitted by teachers, school administrators and daycare facilities who can no longer handle the tolling effects of the opioid crisis. Multiple educators said they have countless students who have clearly not bathed, eaten or slept more than a few hours for days at a time. Others have seen students become violent, throwing desks, getting into fights and verbally abusing other students and teachers.

“They say some really horrific things to you. They call you every name in the book. They will physically aggress towards you,” said Sarah Merchant, a behavioral specialist and teacher at Schrader Elementary School. “If you don’t have a thick skin you can definitely become burnt out. We have had teachers who have had breakdowns.”

This above-average problem, teachers say, has taken over a seemingly average town. The county of roughly 525,000 people does not offer much entertainment aside from a couple of old movie theaters, Dairy Queen, Walmart parking lots and unkempt beaches littered with pollution. The median income is just over $48,000 and only about 53 percent of citizens are in the labor force, many of which work in education, retail or fast food.

The Sheriff’s Office said there were at least 140 reported overdoses in January and February alone, which is 59 more overdoses than that same time frame in 2018. Sixty percent of those were directly related to opioids. They find it hard to keep track of how many people are truly using because the demand for drugs — specifically opioids — is so high, but Capt. Mike Jenkins of the Pasco Sheriff’s Office believes 2019 will continue seeing a rise in overdoses.

U.S. 19, the main road through Pasco County, is a hub for overdoses and drug deals. This needle was found lying a few feet off the highway, surrounded by pieces of cotton gauze and shredded latex. Photo by Li Cohen.

“I liken it sometimes to whack-a-mole. There’ll be a source of supply, we whack that one down and inevitably … there’s someone who immediately fills that gap within a short period of time and then the cycle continues,” he said.  

Even though the state and county have done a lot to combat opioid pills, he said there is still much more to do in regards to the illegal forms of opioids. “

“That solved one problem, but then that contributed to another issue. … If you do not address the demand issue something else is going to fill the void and fill the gap,” Jenkins said. “It’s just a matter of time.”

The office is also trying to handle the large number of opioid addiction cases where children are in the home. Over the past four to five months, Child Protective Investigations has had to remove 250 children from their homes because their parents or guardians were addicted to opioids, a problem that makes up 60 percent of all child removal cases in the county.

While CPI Director Ken Kilian said the department does their best to place children with family members, hundreds of children end up in foster care or staying with teachers until their parents can take them back.

“It’s not easy for a child victim who is witnessing their parents, their aunt, their uncle, suffer from this horrific disease,” Kilian said. “Addiction is extremely traumatizing and that has generational effects that we will see for years to come.”

And that trauma is expected to continue. As Kilian explained, the disease of opioid addiction is an endless cycle. The parents will continuously use, recover and relapse while the child develops behavioral and mental disorders they don’t understand and can’t control when they are at school. Then one day the parents take a dose a little too high. The child is left alone, hopeless and drained. They just watched their parents die and will have to go back to a school system the next day where the staff can’t help but mirror that same feeling.

Teachers feel more unprepared than ever

The school district is trying to help teachers by implementing Trauma Informed Care and the Harmony Project – initiatives that teach educators how to work with students and parents experiencing trauma and how to take care of themselves in dealing with that. Pasco schools social worker Danica Cockrell said being in a community that has high needs and high social deficits establishes an environment with drug use, poor mental health and a lack of communication. With the Trauma Informed Care, she hopes the schools will help teachers be prepared for what is expected to only get worse.

“It is no longer just coming to school to read, write and do math.’ We have to address and answer those social and emotional needs in order for students to be successful,” said Cockrell. I don’t think any school district will ever say that they are over-resourced or over-funded. …  We are definitely a whole child and whole family perspective – we have to be.”

But teachers in the area believe this initiative is not enough. They say there are too many students per teacher given the extent of the issues. They want more resources and support. They are struggling mentally, emotionally and physically to keep up with what is asked of them.

Despite reaching out to nearly 50 current teachers in the county, only two would agree to speak and , only on the condition of anonymity in fear of losing their jobs or worsening their situation in the classroom.

One of those teachers has been with Pasco for 13 years and works at a Title I school. She said the impact of this crisis is difficult to truly assess. Countless students do not receive their basic needs, such as stable housing, food and clothing because of their parents’ addiction, she said.

“How can you support them and tell them it will be alright when they lose their homes constantly? When there is no food, no electricity, no clothes, backpack, school supplies,” she said. “Many of us staff say constantly this feels like a mental health facility, full of emotional and behavioral needs in a place that lacks resources and personnel.”

This gap has led to a severe teacher shortage in the district. There have been 50 teaching positions posted on the district’s website since January alone. On the first day of school last August, there were 66 open positions.

Teachers say it is increasingly hard to stick around when they don’t receive cooperation from students, parents and administrators. Merchant explained that in the behavioral unit at Schrader Elementary School, only three out of seven teachers returned to their positions this year. Replacing them has not been easy, as the replacements tend to be first-year teachers or are cross-certification teachers who earned bachelor’s degrees in a different academic area and are working on getting their teaching certifications.

“I don’t know there’s a lot of teachers that see this day in, day out for years because not a lot of teachers stick around,” she said, adding that teachers tend to have emotional and mental breakdowns because of the behavioral issues they experience with students. “I would say the breakdowns are probably once every month or two. … Every day, every other day we have major incidents.”

The second anonymous teacher worked in Pasco for more than a decade and only recently moved to another district after suffering physical attacks and threats from her third-grade students. She claimed she never received adequate assistance from the school, the district or parents and the support staff was “often underqualified or spread too thin.” She, and many other teachers, she said, often left their classrooms shaking, crying, and headed to therapy or the doctor for elevated stress.

“Teachers are under severe duress and pressure due to the workload expectations that are completely and humanly impossible,” she said. “We are charged with finding differentiated lessons to meet the needs of kids who are usually two to three years below grade level.”

She went on to say that administrators won’t write referrals for bad student behavior because it impacts the school’s overall grade and can create bad press. She has personally complained of threats from her students and administrators would not document them.

“Children who are severely neglected by unfit parents do not self-regulate and reason like kids from healthy, functioning homes. … We are trying to teach kids grade level standards when they are unable to focus, disrespectful, don’t care and know an adult at home doesn’t care,” she said. “Teachers fight a battle every day and we never win.”

Students try to take control

Ashley Dew was 12 years old when she found her dad was using opioids. Despite living most of her life in Pasco County, she felt that most of the people she grew up with, including teachers and school administrators, did not know how to help her.

Her experience as a student dealing with the opioid crisis led to her becoming a teaching aide at World of Montessori School in Pasco. The 19-year-old is surrounded by despair seeing children fight the same struggles as she did. Many of her kindergarteners and first-graders suffer from behavioral and neurological disorders because of their parents’ drug abuse. Drug deals occur within feet of the school’s locked gates.

“In the classroom you have your bad students … Talking non-stop. Always having to be the center of attention,” she said. “It breaks my heart. I have two brothers in my class and I know that they go through a lot because of their father with substance misuse.”

As a teaching aide at World of Knowledge Montessori School, Ashley Dew, 19, works with students to complete assignments and learn material that works with their mental and emotional state on any given date. This document helps students organize what they can and cannot handle given their situation for the day. Photo by Li Cohen.

The school does what it can to help. When students are overwhelmed – academically or personally – Dew and other teachers allows them to play with class pets, walk through a vibrant garden or have one-on-one talks with staff members. During her talks with students, Dew tries to help students cope with their parents’ situations and realize that they are not their parents’ caretakers. She, however, struggles to take her own advice and regularly chokes up when she reflects on her situation.

Dew watched her father, who she was once very close with, become a disheveled shell. Her relationship with her father became a couple of comments on Facebook and missed birthdays. There were days when she found it difficult to focus in school and on the days she needed the most help understanding her father’s choices, the school counselor did not have a spare moment to help.

“My father was never a bad person, but this drug issue changed him and changed us. … It hit me at my sweet 16. I didn’t have him come because every time I’m around him it was like talking to a stranger,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes. “I wanted that daddy-daughter sweet 16 dance but I didn’t get it. It’s sad waking up with anxiety like am I going to get that call – is he dead or alive.”

One of the worst parts of the situation for Dew was that she felt her multiple high schools never took her situation seriously. She often felt left in the dust and it took years for her to realize that there were others going through similar situation.

“I definitely don’t feel like [schools] take it serious. It’s like ‘Oh, your dad’s just a junkie,’ and that’s not true,” she said, adding that the first time she found help was at the PACE Center for Girls. “In public school you were lucky to even get in the counselor’s office. I think I saw my counselor once. … They just don’t really care.”

While Dew hopes that her school can set a new standard for how teachers and schools as a whole approach these issues, other students in the district are trying to help students better understand what opioids are, how they impact the body and how they can impact the future of the crisis in Pasco.

Jocelyn Meriwether is only 14 years old, but when the Bayonet Point Middle schooler opens her mouth to speak about the opioid crisis, her soft and high-pitched voice becomes a megaphone. After seeing a presentation on the effects of opioids by local youth-led organization Save Teens Against Drugs (STAND), she decided to get involved and has since worked her way up to vice president of the organization.

“Kids don’t understand the effects. They think, you did it for a day and if you don’t like it you never do it again,” she said. “But it’s not that simple; you can get addicted and then it follows you because you have that need for it and that want for it.”

As part of the youth-led organization, Meriwether goes to various events and speaks at conferences in Pasco. She wants students and parents to know the signs of substance abuse so they can help those who are struggling and spread awareness about the direct and indirect effects.

“Kids will get disruptive in classes and a big thing in our school right now is fights,” she said. “Disruptions is hard because the teacher gets involved and tries and stops it. It takes away from our learning time and our education.”

Meriwether n and the other STAND members are working with state legislators to get their organization involved with more schools and change prescription opioid legislation.

A community searches for a solution

Since 2016, Pasco County schools have gained more than 3,300 new pre-k to 12th-grade students among their 96 schools, according to the school district, but only one more instructional employee. There were 601 new support employees, including secretaries, bus drivers and custodians, as well as administrators.

Along with caring for students who are dealing with opioid abuse at home, World of Knowledge Montessori School in Holiday, Florida, is surrounded by drug deals and people under the influence coming within feet of the school’s property. Photo by Li Cohen.

While the district has an overall “B” rating by the state, the majority of the schools within the district are rated a “C,” meaning they are just meeting the standard requirements for student performance, learning gains, student attendance, and standardized test results. When schools and districts have higher grades, they receive more funding from the state and more control over what they can do with that money.

“Without the funding to put people in place to do threat assessments, to respond to students’ needs, we’re not going to be able to meet our goals or meet our responsibilities under the law,” said Public Information Officer Linda Cobbe. “People don’t know what the district does as a whole but they also don’t understand what teachers do in a day. … People say you get off for the summer, you only work 8 to 3. Why should you make even what you’re making. But it’s not just standing in front of a classroom and teaching.”

Cobbe and other school administrators are continuing to implement Trauma Informed Care, as well as more programs and trainings for teachers. Police have created a system that looks at opioid addiction as an illness, rather than a crime, and now focus on helping people recover from addiction. When they execute a search warrant at a home where they know there are addicts, for example, they bring health coordinators to talk and help addicts mentally process the situation.

Even still, overdose cases are increasing, as is the burden on educators and students.

Ryalls-Clephane said smaller class sizes may help. Per state legislation, pre-k through third-grade classes should have no more than 18 students; grades four through eight should have no more than 22; and grades nine through 12 should have no more than 25.

“I work in a school with 700 students and I’m the only school counselor there,” she said. “In my fifth-grade classes I’ve got 26 kids … One or two more make a huge difference. One with behavior problems makes a huge difference.”

Dew wants schools to realize how the behavioral and mental effects of dealing with the opioid crisis truly impacts her and the hundreds of other students and teachers. There should be more counselors and staff available that are thoroughly trained to speak with and help all members of the school.

“Every teenager feels like they’re alone if they’re going through a personal issue with substance misuse,” said Dew. “It takes a big part of their self-esteem out and they may think this is how my life is so this is how I’m going to grow up.”

The post As parents overdose, Pasco County schools becomes overburdened appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

Pasco County, Florida, is a primarily white middle-class community perfectly nestled between the Gulf of Mexico’s sunny beaches and Disney World. But despite being in the sunniest state and close to the happiest place on earth, it is clouded by addiction. Parents are getting high, children are being neglected and teachers are desperately seeking help as the opioid crisis unleashes its plague on the state of education.

Cynthia Ryalls-Clephane, 69, has been a school counselor in Pasco since 1992. There are countless cases, she said, of parents too high to even discuss their child’s well-being. She has seen students unable and unwilling to focus on their exams because their mom overdosed the night before and they were placed into a stranger’s home in the middle of the night. The teachers she works with are just getting more stressed, overwhelmed and defeated. They want to help, but the district and parents expect them to be foster parents, behavioral specialists, social workers, school counselors, personal tutors, life coaches and babysitters — on top of simply trying to teach students a basic curriculum between the hours of 8 a.m. and 3 p.m.      

 “I get kids that come to school who are homeless living in the woods. … Many times kids want to be at school because this is the safest place,” said Ryalls-Clephane. “I think about a variety of children that I’ve talked to teachers about. They feel helpless because the drugs are causing so many problems.”

Throughout the year, Child Protective Investigations receives approximately 7,500 allegations of child abuse and neglect. Most of those reports are submitted by teachers, school administrators and daycare facilities who can no longer handle the tolling effects of the opioid crisis. Multiple educators said they have countless students who have clearly not bathed, eaten or slept more than a few hours for days at a time. Others have seen students become violent, throwing desks, getting into fights and verbally abusing other students and teachers.

“They say some really horrific things to you. They call you every name in the book. They will physically aggress towards you,” said Sarah Merchant, a behavioral specialist and teacher at Schrader Elementary School. “If you don’t have a thick skin you can definitely become burnt out. We have had teachers who have had breakdowns.”

This above-average problem, teachers say, has taken over a seemingly average town. The county of roughly 525,000 people does not offer much entertainment aside from a couple of old movie theaters, Dairy Queen, Walmart parking lots and unkempt beaches littered with pollution. The median income is just over $48,000 and only about 53 percent of citizens are in the labor force, many of which work in education, retail or fast food.

The Sheriff’s Office said there were at least 140 reported overdoses in January and February alone, which is 59 more overdoses than that same time frame in 2018. Sixty percent of those were directly related to opioids. They find it hard to keep track of how many people are truly using because the demand for drugs — specifically opioids — is so high, but Capt. Mike Jenkins of the Pasco Sheriff’s Office believes 2019 will continue seeing a rise in overdoses.

U.S. 19, the main road through Pasco County, is a hub for overdoses and drug deals. This needle was found lying a few feet off the highway, surrounded by pieces of cotton gauze and shredded latex. Photo by Li Cohen.

“I liken it sometimes to whack-a-mole. There’ll be a source of supply, we whack that one down and inevitably … there’s someone who immediately fills that gap within a short period of time and then the cycle continues,” he said.  

Even though the state and county have done a lot to combat opioid pills, he said there is still much more to do in regards to the illegal forms of opioids. “

“That solved one problem, but then that contributed to another issue. … If you do not address the demand issue something else is going to fill the void and fill the gap,” Jenkins said. “It’s just a matter of time.”

The office is also trying to handle the large number of opioid addiction cases where children are in the home. Over the past four to five months, Child Protective Investigations has had to remove 250 children from their homes because their parents or guardians were addicted to opioids, a problem that makes up 60 percent of all child removal cases in the county.

While CPI Director Ken Kilian said the department does their best to place children with family members, hundreds of children end up in foster care or staying with teachers until their parents can take them back.

“It’s not easy for a child victim who is witnessing their parents, their aunt, their uncle, suffer from this horrific disease,” Kilian said. “Addiction is extremely traumatizing and that has generational effects that we will see for years to come.”

And that trauma is expected to continue. As Kilian explained, the disease of opioid addiction is an endless cycle. The parents will continuously use, recover and relapse while the child develops behavioral and mental disorders they don’t understand and can’t control when they are at school. Then one day the parents take a dose a little too high. The child is left alone, hopeless and drained. They just watched their parents die and will have to go back to a school system the next day where the staff can’t help but mirror that same feeling.

Teachers feel more unprepared than ever

The school district is trying to help teachers by implementing Trauma Informed Care and the Harmony Project – initiatives that teach educators how to work with students and parents experiencing trauma and how to take care of themselves in dealing with that. Pasco schools social worker Danica Cockrell said being in a community that has high needs and high social deficits establishes an environment with drug use, poor mental health and a lack of communication. With the Trauma Informed Care, she hopes the schools will help teachers be prepared for what is expected to only get worse.

“It is no longer just coming to school to read, write and do math.’ We have to address and answer those social and emotional needs in order for students to be successful,” said Cockrell. I don’t think any school district will ever say that they are over-resourced or over-funded. …  We are definitely a whole child and whole family perspective – we have to be.”

But teachers in the area believe this initiative is not enough. They say there are too many students per teacher given the extent of the issues. They want more resources and support. They are struggling mentally, emotionally and physically to keep up with what is asked of them.

Despite reaching out to nearly 50 current teachers in the county, only two would agree to speak and , only on the condition of anonymity in fear of losing their jobs or worsening their situation in the classroom.

One of those teachers has been with Pasco for 13 years and works at a Title I school. She said the impact of this crisis is difficult to truly assess. Countless students do not receive their basic needs, such as stable housing, food and clothing because of their parents’ addiction, she said.

“How can you support them and tell them it will be alright when they lose their homes constantly? When there is no food, no electricity, no clothes, backpack, school supplies,” she said. “Many of us staff say constantly this feels like a mental health facility, full of emotional and behavioral needs in a place that lacks resources and personnel.”

This gap has led to a severe teacher shortage in the district. There have been 50 teaching positions posted on the district’s website since January alone. On the first day of school last August, there were 66 open positions.

Teachers say it is increasingly hard to stick around when they don’t receive cooperation from students, parents and administrators. Merchant explained that in the behavioral unit at Schrader Elementary School, only three out of seven teachers returned to their positions this year. Replacing them has not been easy, as the replacements tend to be first-year teachers or are cross-certification teachers who earned bachelor’s degrees in a different academic area and are working on getting their teaching certifications.

“I don’t know there’s a lot of teachers that see this day in, day out for years because not a lot of teachers stick around,” she said, adding that teachers tend to have emotional and mental breakdowns because of the behavioral issues they experience with students. “I would say the breakdowns are probably once every month or two. … Every day, every other day we have major incidents.”

The second anonymous teacher worked in Pasco for more than a decade and only recently moved to another district after suffering physical attacks and threats from her third-grade students. She claimed she never received adequate assistance from the school, the district or parents and the support staff was “often underqualified or spread too thin.” She, and many other teachers, she said, often left their classrooms shaking, crying, and headed to therapy or the doctor for elevated stress.

“Teachers are under severe duress and pressure due to the workload expectations that are completely and humanly impossible,” she said. “We are charged with finding differentiated lessons to meet the needs of kids who are usually two to three years below grade level.”

She went on to say that administrators won’t write referrals for bad student behavior because it impacts the school’s overall grade and can create bad press. She has personally complained of threats from her students and administrators would not document them.

“Children who are severely neglected by unfit parents do not self-regulate and reason like kids from healthy, functioning homes. … We are trying to teach kids grade level standards when they are unable to focus, disrespectful, don’t care and know an adult at home doesn’t care,” she said. “Teachers fight a battle every day and we never win.”

Students try to take control

Ashley Dew was 12 years old when she found her dad was using opioids. Despite living most of her life in Pasco County, she felt that most of the people she grew up with, including teachers and school administrators, did not know how to help her.

Her experience as a student dealing with the opioid crisis led to her becoming a teaching aide at World of Montessori School in Pasco. The 19-year-old is surrounded by despair seeing children fight the same struggles as she did. Many of her kindergarteners and first-graders suffer from behavioral and neurological disorders because of their parents’ drug abuse. Drug deals occur within feet of the school’s locked gates.

“In the classroom you have your bad students … Talking non-stop. Always having to be the center of attention,” she said. “It breaks my heart. I have two brothers in my class and I know that they go through a lot because of their father with substance misuse.”

The school does what it can to help. When students are overwhelmed – academically or personally – Dew and other teachers allows them to play with class pets, walk through a vibrant garden or have one-on-one talks with staff members. During her talks with students, Dew tries to help students cope with their parents’ situations and realize that they are not their parents’ caretakers. She, however, struggles to take her own advice and regularly chokes up when she reflects on her situation.

Dew watched her father, who she was once very close with, become a disheveled shell. Her relationship with her father became a couple of comments on Facebook and missed birthdays. There were days when she found it difficult to focus in school and on the days she needed the most help understanding her father’s choices, the school counselor did not have a spare moment to help.

“My father was never a bad person, but this drug issue changed him and changed us. … It hit me at my sweet 16. I didn’t have him come because every time I’m around him it was like talking to a stranger,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes. “I wanted that daddy-daughter sweet 16 dance but I didn’t get it. It’s sad waking up with anxiety like am I going to get that call – is he dead or alive.”

One of the worst parts of the situation for Dew was that she felt her multiple high schools never took her situation seriously. She often felt left in the dust and it took years for her to realize that there were others going through similar situation.

“I definitely don’t feel like [schools] take it serious. It’s like ‘Oh, your dad’s just a junkie,’ and that’s not true,” she said, adding that the first time she found help was at the PACE Center for Girls. “In public school you were lucky to even get in the counselor’s office. I think I saw my counselor once. … They just don’t really care.”

While Dew hopes that her school can set a new standard for how teachers and schools as a whole approach these issues, other students in the district are trying to help students better understand what opioids are, how they impact the body and how they can impact the future of the crisis in Pasco.

Jocelyn Meriwether is only 14 years old, but when the Bayonet Point Middle schooler opens her mouth to speak about the opioid crisis, her soft and high-pitched voice becomes a megaphone. After seeing a presentation on the effects of opioids by local youth-led organization Save Teens Against Drugs (STAND), she decided to get involved and has since worked her way up to vice president of the organization.

“Kids don’t understand the effects. They think, you did it for a day and if you don’t like it you never do it again,” she said. “But it’s not that simple; you can get addicted and then it follows you because you have that need for it and that want for it.”

As part of the youth-led organization, Meriwether goes to various events and speaks at conferences in Pasco. She wants students and parents to know the signs of substance abuse so they can help those who are struggling and spread awareness about the direct and indirect effects.

“Kids will get disruptive in classes and a big thing in our school right now is fights,” she said. “Disruptions is hard because the teacher gets involved and tries and stops it. It takes away from our learning time and our education.”

Meriwether n and the other STAND members are working with state legislators to get their organization involved with more schools and change prescription opioid legislation.

A community searches for a solution

Since 2016, Pasco County schools have gained more than 3,300 new pre-k to 12th-grade students among their 96 schools, according to the school district, but only one more instructional employee. There were 601 new support employees, including secretaries, bus drivers and custodians, as well as administrators.

While the district has an overall “B” rating by the state, the majority of the schools within the district are rated a “C,” meaning they are just meeting the standard requirements for student performance, learning gains, student attendance, and standardized test results. When schools and districts have higher grades, they receive more funding from the state and more control over what they can do with that money.

“Without the funding to put people in place to do threat assessments, to respond to students’ needs, we’re not going to be able to meet our goals or meet our responsibilities under the law,” said Public Information Officer Linda Cobbe. “People don’t know what the district does as a whole but they also don’t understand what teachers do in a day. … People say you get off for the summer, you only work 8 to 3. Why should you make even what you’re making. But it’s not just standing in front of a classroom and teaching.”

Cobbe and other school administrators are continuing to implement Trauma Informed Care, as well as more programs and trainings for teachers. Police have created a system that looks at opioid addiction as an illness, rather than a crime, and now focus on helping people recover from addiction. When they execute a search warrant at a home where they know there are addicts, for example, they bring health coordinators to talk and help addicts mentally process the situation.

Even still, overdose cases are increasing, as is the burden on educators and students.

Ryalls-Clephane said smaller class sizes may help. Per state legislation, pre-k through third-grade classes should have no more than 18 students; grades four through eight should have no more than 22; and grades nine through 12 should have no more than 25.

“I work in a school with 700 students and I’m the only school counselor there,” she said. “In my fifth-grade classes I’ve got 26 kids … One or two more make a huge difference. One with behavior problems makes a huge difference.”

Dew wants schools to realize how the behavioral and mental effects of dealing with the opioid crisis truly impacts her and the hundreds of other students and teachers. There should be more counselors and staff available that are thoroughly trained to speak with and help all members of the school.

“Every teenager feels like they’re alone if they’re going through a personal issue with substance misuse,” said Dew. “It takes a big part of their self-esteem out and they may think this is how my life is so this is how I’m going to grow up.”

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