Author: West Park Times

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Fair ends today (Sunday August, 16) at 7 p.m.

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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE LAND

By Jordan Walker

Kimberly Rodriguez is an accomplished veteran of Cleveland’s food scene. She has worked as a department manager at a grocery store, a personal chef for professional athletes, an event planner, and an instructor in restaurants, cafes and markets. 

Yet, the last two weeks of March were the most stressful of her life. She contracted Covid-19 and lost her job. Like many restaurant workers thrown into financial uncertainty, Rodriguez now deals with federal and state unemployment systems ill-equipped to handle her plight.

She’d been working for nine months as a front-of-house manager at a local chain restaurant in Cleveland Heights when Ohio Governor Mike DeWine’s shutdown order closed indoor dining rooms in March. The restaurant still provided takeout and delivery and Rodriguez continued to work there more than 40 hours per week as the pandemic spread. “Customers were just extremely demanding and not taking responsibility for their own well-being and care,” she says. 

Then, on March 29th, she got a fever and called in sick. She ended up being out for two weeks because her fevers recurred every day or every other day, rising to 104 degrees and once even peaking at 107 degrees. After she’d reached her maximum sick time, she lost her job.

“I received maybe three lines in an email from my boss saying they gave me the maximum amount of paid time off, and that I was going to have to apply for unemployment now,” she says. She received a code to apply through the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services (ODJFS) and was given up to a month of paid healthcare.

After being diagnosed with Covid-19, Rodriguez found herself jobless, rejected from federal unemployment aid, and stripped of the employer-sponsored health insurance that provided medical care for both she and her wife, Alexia.

“It threw my life into complete chaos. I lost my job, I lost my healthcare, and I didn’t see my daughter for almost four months because she stayed with her father while I was in isolation; I mean it really just changed everything,” Rodriguez says.

Rodriguez applied for unemployment assistance from the state of Ohio, but her application was rejected. Although she’s now mostly recovered, she still suffers from fatigue. She recently landed her “dream job” as the part-time director of Meals on Wheels in Shaker Heights and works as a private chef on the side, but she is earning half the income that she made before – and she’s not sure when or if she’ll be able to get health care again.

“Now I am basically thrown back into the gig economy, going from gig to gig and supplementing it with my part time job at a nonprofit,” Rodriguez says as she lets out a laugh. “This wasn’t the way I thought this year was going to go.”

Ironically, as Congress struggles to come to agreement on the next round of coronavirus relief aid, many restaurant workers say they didn’t receive the help they needed the first time. With ODJFS overwhelmed by applications, many are still waiting to receive unemployment. Additionally, the state’s fraud crackdown is harming those needing benefits, social service advocates say.

Bret Crow, a spokesperson for ODJFS, says the number of applications that have inundated the agency since the shutdown is unprecedented, more than the last four years combined. He says that the department has done their best to make adjustments to cope with the influx of claims, including hiring more staff, expanding call center hours, and improving their website. While more than 1.2 million Ohioans have received over $10 billion in unemployment benefits, more than 1.6 million people have applied and there are still thousands of applications pending, he says.

“The system was not designed to handle the historic influx of claims like we’ve experienced since March,” he says. “Before the pandemic hit, we had recognized that it was time to update the technology, and we were already working on that.” 

An overwhelmed system 

Rodriguez’s story is not uncommon, says Zach Schiller, Research Director at Policy Matters Ohio. Ohio’s unemployment system is “worse” than others around the country because part-time and low-wage workers, including many restaurant workers, often aren’t eligible for aid. Additionally, the massive influx of applications during the pandemic created a backlog. Even though ODJFS added more than 1,000 new workers to answer calls after the pandemic struck, there are still problems with the system.

Ohio’s traditional unemployment aid is regulated by an earnings test that is less generous than most states. It requires applicants to rake in a weekly income of at least $269. For restaurant workers that primarily rely on tips, and for many part-time and minimum wage workers, getting approved was difficult before the pandemic. When the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program expanded eligibility, hundreds of thousands of people applied. Advocacy groups including Policy Matters Ohio, the Ohio Organizing  Collaborative and Ohio Association of Foodbanks have called on the state legislature to fix the system. They urged the Senate to take up House Bill 614, which recently passed the House, to study and reform the unemployment system.

“Now I am basically thrown back into the gig economy, going from gig to gig and supplementing it with my part time job at a nonprofit. This wasn’t the way I thought this year was going to go.”

— KIMBERLY RODRIGUEZ

“Our unemployment system was ill-prepared for the avalanche of claims that descended when these stay-at-home orders started in march,” Schiller says. “Even now, there are eighty thousand Ohioans who have pending claims for traditional unemployment that have not been getting processed. There are more than two hundred thousand Ohioans who have pending claims for PUA that have not been processed.”

Ohio’s system is confusing because individuals in Ohio must apply for either traditional unemployment aid or the PUA, but applying for one does not make you eligible for the other, adds Mason Pesek, staff attorney with The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland. PUA applications are automatically rejected if the applicant has a pending application for regular unemployment aid. As a result, some people have been waiting months on a determination of their aid eligibility, and a technical hiccup could mean they’re on their own. 

“The reality of the current situation is that all these systems are so overloaded that people fall between the cracks, mistakes are made, and there are big issues on the backend,” Pesek says.

Ohio isn’t the only state that has faced problems with its unemployment system. A recent Brookings Foundation blog post cites research by the Century Foundation that by the end of May, only about 18.8 million out of 33 million claims (57 percent) had been paid nationwide, causing hardship for many. “Efforts could be made to improve the functioning of the UI system so  applications can be processed and checks delivered more quickly,” write authors Manuel Alcalá Kovalski and Louise Sheiner.

Rodriguez would have been eligible for payments of $1,000 every week for fourteen weeks if approved. However, after five weeks of receiving no response, she finally received one payment of $1,000. Then ODJFS notified her that her application was rejected and she would have to return the one payment she received. “I was not given a reason,” she says. “I submitted an appeal and I still haven’t heard back.”

Treading water to stay afloat

She’s not alone in facing the difficulties of navigating the state’s unemployment system in a pandemic, and even for those who are back at work, they’ve returned to an industry forever changed by Covid-19. More than 50 percent of restaurants are not expecting to make it nine months if the virus continues unabated, according a recent survey by the Ohio Restaurant Association, and restaurant workers not making as much money due to limited hours and lower tips from decreased business.

Veteran pastry chef Traci Morrison had to wait a month for her unemployment compensation after she was furloughed on March 23rd from her full-time job as a specialty baker with Campbell’s Sweets Factory. Morrison, who baked and decorated all of the cupcakes for Campbell’s and was in charge of cupcake displays at different locations in Northeast Ohio, was eventually called back to work part-time. However, this dissolved all of her employer-sponsored health benefits and unemployment compensation and slashed her hours from over 40 to no more than 18 per week.

“The number of cupcakes I’m baking just keeps getting smaller, and smaller, and smaller,” says Morrison, who is looking for a rare full-time job with benefits in the restaurant scene. “It’s hard. I feel like my depression is just kind of creeping in because my schedule changes day to day and some days I just wake up and think ‘what’s next?’”

Morrison reapplied for part-time unemployment aid, but is still waiting for a determination on her application. “It’s just a waiting game and all of my savings are basically going towards everyday expenses,” she says.

Like Rodriguez, Anthony Gregorio contracted Covid-19 in late March and is still waiting on his unemployment determination from ODJFS.

Gregorio, who has worked in the Cleveland restaurant scene for twenty-two years, quit his job as a server at the beginning of March for personal reasons. Right when he started applying for jobs at the end of the month, he became ill. On March 27th, he tested positive for the coronavirus. Because he has asthma, he ended up having to go to the hospital because he couldn’t breathe. It took him three days of constant oxygen and steroids to finally recover. 

Because he had Covid-19, he can apply for PUA benefits, but he didn’t find out about the program until after he’d already applied for regular unemployment benefits. Now he has to wait until after his application comes back to apply for PUA. It has been seven weeks since Gregorio applied for regular unemployment. When he was finally able to get through to someone at ODJFS, they told him that it was unlikely his application would be approved, but he probably wouldn’t get approved for more than $150 a week or barely enough to afford groceries. 

“It’s ridiculous,” he says. “The only way I’ve made it through not having unemployment aid during quarantine is through the stimulus check — I don’t have any money.” 

Gregorio is now working part-time at Planet Fitness, but is making “peanuts.” Rodriguez is also grateful to be working, but she’s still catching up from her months of being unemployed. “It’s just a really difficult spot to be in,” she says. “If I had just gotten a few weeks of that unemployment money, I would be fine — I would be totally set and not worried about anything.”

However, she still does not have employer-sponsored healthcare. Her wife is working full time as a chef at a restaurant where other full-time workers are offered spousal coverage, but Rodriguez says the employer declined to offer it to them. The couple has yet to talk to a lawyer.

In the meantime, she’s trying to stay healthy until she’s able to access healthcare again.

Rodriguez and Morrison both say they did not consider buying their own healthcare plans because of how expensive the market options are, applying for Medicaid instead. “I need to have some kind of healthcare in place, but without a steady cash flow right now, there is no way that I can search for something more substantial (than Medicaid) on my own,” Morrison says.

Schiller says Ohio’s problems should be a wake-up call for lawmakers, and force the necessary changes that would make the system sustainable in the long run. “We need a permanent system in which workers who work 20 hours a week can qualify for unemployment,” he says. “PUA needs to be institutionalized and made a part of the regular unemployment system. It would require an overhaul of the entire system on a long-term basis, but hopefully the extremely high levels of unemployment that we are seeing now will lead to a rethinking of the system.”

By Rachel Dissell and Brie Zelter

For some parents of school-age children, the decision of most area school districts to start the school year with remote and virtual learning came as a relief, as uncertainty about increasing cases of COVID-19 and possible outbreaks loom.

But for many Cleveland-area parents, the news sparked worry.

Parents who can relate to the following scenarios now balance concerns over the coronavirus and fear that their children are falling behind in school or are unsafe at home:

• Parents who cannot work from home.
• Those who do not have a reliable internet connection.
• Those who do not have the necessary virtual-learning technology.
• Those who live in neighborhoods with rising levels of gun violence.

Community after-school programs and some area churches are stepping in with plans to offer safe, digitally equipped, socially distanced places for students during school hours beginning in September. The hope is that they can help parents keep working and students keep up with studies this school year.

Boys & Girls Clubs of Northeast Ohio accelerated plans to expand its programs as soon as Cleveland Metropolitan School District CEO Eric Gordon announced in July that students would learn remotely for the first nine weeks of the school year, a decision followed by many other local districts. 

One of many concerns was the well-known “digital divide” in the city’s poorest neighborhoods, said Jeff Scott, president and CEO of Boys & Girls Clubs of Northeast Ohio. More than 40% of Cleveland households don’t have regular access to broadband, according to a digital inclusion study and U.S. census data from 2018.

The clubs normally serve about 2,000 youths, ages 6 to 18, daily at 39 centers in Cleveland, Akron, and Lorain and Erie counties. The arts and recreational activities and tutoring and career-readiness programs traditionally are provided after school. 

The idea that students, through no fault of their own, might lose academic ground, “It just makes your stomach churn,” Scott said. “That’s why we are so committed to figuring out a model that allows us to operate during the [school] day.”

In April, a CMSD survey of parents led to estimates that as many as two-thirds of families did not have electronic devices needed for learning at home. The district scrambled in the spring to distribute more than 10,000 computers and WiFi hotspots to students. Local foundations and businesses have contributed millions of dollars and donated hotspots for the fall, though it is unclear how many students still lack adequate computers and high-speed internet access needed for remote learning. CMSD schools last week were conducting parent surveys about technology needs. 

A challenge for churches

Local pastors will also offer support to working parents and their children by opening up as many as 20 churches to school-age children in September. 

The Cleveland Clergy Coalition hopes to offer safe places with digital connections and adult supervision during the nine weeks or longer of remote learning, said the Rev. Aaron Phillips, who leads the coalition. Some of the congregations provided after-school programming and tutoring before the pandemic, Phillips said, but the demand is expected to be greater this fall, especially for parents who must work. 

The churches that will open to students, mostly on Cleveland’s East Side and in the inner-ring suburbs, face a litany of logistical issues to get their spaces ready and to make sure proper health protocols are in place for children who would come during the daytime hours to learn.  

The project, Phillips said, won’t be easy. “It’s a huge undertaking and we don’t know where the funding resources are going to be to help us with any of this.”

The challenges of opening to students are also compounded by the higher rate of COVID-19 infections in Cleveland’s Black community, Phillips said. As of July 15, Black Clevelanders made up 73% of the hospitalizations for COVID-19 and 57% of the deaths attributed to complications from the disease, though they make up about half of the city’s population. 

Other organizations, such as YWCA of Greater Cleveland, charter schools and youth development programs, are also looking at operating small learning centers for school-age children. 

A test run

The Boys & Girls Clubs estimates it might be able to serve 500 to 700 students at its standalone centers, three of which are in Cleveland, where 37,000 kids attend district schools and more attend charter and parochial schools. 

Churches are still gauging demand and figuring out how many students each building can accommodate. 

With a small number of students using the facilities each day, Boys & Girls Clubs believes it can operate safely. The organization already had a test run of sorts, Scott said. In June, it reopened nine of its Northeast Ohio locations to provide meals and safe gathering places to kids dealing with stress from the pandemic, social and racial unrest, and community violence, Scott said. 

The first time a club learned of an exposure to the virus, which has happened a handful of times, it shut down for several days to clean. Leaders personally made sure front-line staff were comfortable with reopening, Scott said.

The organization activates a task force within the hour of learning of a positive coronavirus case involving a club member. It uses a process similar to the one when a club member or family experiences community violence: Learn what happened, find out how staff and families are feeling, make a plan to respond to concerns and plan for next steps, he said.

The effort includes balancing both virus-related health issues and the other safety issues some kids face daily. In July, the week the decision was made for Cleveland schools to open remotely, the city had recorded 83 official coronavirus deaths, five more than the 78 reported homicide deaths.

“It really is about the nuances of all these situations,” Scott said. “And you’re in a tactical battle on a day-to-day basis and make the best decision that you can based on the information that you have. But the inputs are many. The inputs are about the virus, the inputs [are] about our kids’ safety and all of the social unrest and the racial equity issues that we’re dealing with,” he said.  

Violent crime in Cleveland neighborhoods is up. Homicides have increased about 20% from last year and shootings have jumped nearly 40%, according to Cleveland police crime statistics. 

Four kids involved with Boys & Girls Clubs in Cleveland have been killed or had a family member killed by gun violence since the beginning of May, Scott said. Pre-pandemic, a single such incident might have happened once every couple of months, he said.

Attendance at the King Kennedy club on the East Side was down recently following several shootings, Scott said. Children were afraid to walk the 200 yards to the club from the King Kennedy Estates, where many of the members live. 

National effort

Efforts similar to those in Cleveland are emerging across the country, particularly in urban areas, where concerns about COVID-19 have to be balanced with the realities of keeping children fed and safe from violence and other risks where they live. 

Higher-income families are creating “learning pods” by hiring educators to help with instruction for small groups of children while schools are closed or operating virtually, said Jen Rinehart, vice president for research and policy at the Afterschool Alliance, a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C.

Replicating that pod-style learning among local organizations or programs that serve low-income families can help prevent existing inequities from being exacerbated, she said. The alliance created a blueprint for programs looking to partner with school districts. 

But those endeavors will need public policy support and funding so that all young people have access to a safe, supervised place that offers technology support, access to food and additional enrichment, she said. 

One obstacle is that current federal funding, through child care and education grants that support before- and after- school programs, only allows money to be spent when school is not in session. The Afterschool Alliance and others have asked the U.S. Department of Education to relax those rules so money can be used to serve children who are learning virtually during the school day, Rinehart said. 

Planning for school

Over the next few weeks, staff from the Boys & Girls Clubs will prepare each site that will open to students, working with school districts from Cleveland to Sandusky, Scott said. 

Staff members are trying to answer a long list of questions, including:

• How many kids they can safely serve?
• Should gyms be used to spread kids out?
• What hours should they be open?
• What infrastructure — from desks to power cords, fiber-optic cables and hotspots — are needed?
• How long will it take to ramp up and how much it will cost?

Ideally, the clubs will create distance-learning pods where children can set up to do school work and the center’s youth development staff can monitor and help them with their work. 

Depending on the club, the plan is to serve ages 6 to 18 and group them by age, like the old schoolhouse model, Scott said.  

The centers hope to also continue to offer after-school programs by closing to clean for a few hours each day and then reopening, Scott said. 

The churches that will open to students, mostly on Cleveland’s East Side and in the inner-ring suburbs, also face a litany of logistical issues to get their spaces ready and to make sure proper health protocols are in place for children who would come during the daytime hours to learn. 

“It’s a matter of safety as well as providing the tutoring and educational piece that we know our students are going to need during this virtual period as well,” he said.

The Boys & Girls Clubs and the clergy coalition both said they were working closely with CMSD to reach families that might need help the most. They are also learning how to use the district’s new online education software, and discussing whether district transportation might be available for some students. 

Cleveland Metropolitian School District officials did not respond to questions sent last week about the community efforts to support students’ learning. 

Bullet points for possible info to pull out in a box:

More than 40% of Cleveland households don’t have regular access to broadband, according to a digital inclusion study and U.S. census data from 2018.

Some 37,000 children attend Cleveland Metropolitan School District schools, not including charter and parochial schools. 

The district distributed more than 10,000 computers and WiFi hotspots to students this spring. Local foundations and businesses have contributed millions of dollars and donated hotspots for the fall, but it is unclear how many students still lack adequate computers and high-speed internet access needed for remote learning. 

The Boys & Girls Clubs of Northeast Ohio, which has 39 centers in Cleveland, Akron, and Lorain and Erie counties, estimates it might be able to serve 500 to 700 students at its standalone centers, three of which are in Cleveland.

As many as 20 local churches plan to open to school-age children in September to support working parents, though funding is an issue.

Other organizations are considering small learning centers for school-age children, including YWCA of Greater Cleveland, local charter schools and youth development programs. 

Contact info for parents seeking help: 

Boys & Girls Clubs of Northeast Ohio: (216) 883-2106

The Cleveland Clergy Coalition: clevelandclergycoalition@gmail.com.