Cut off: School closings leave rural students isolated

CUBA, N.M. (AP) — The midday arrival of a school bus at Cyliss Castillo's home on the remote edge of a mesa breaks up the long days of boredom and isolation for the high school senior.

The driver hands over food in white plastic bags, collects Castillo's school assignments and offers some welcome conversation before setting out for another home.

The closing of classrooms and the switch to remote learning because of the coronavirus have left Castillo and other students in this school district on the sparsely populated fringe of the Navajo Nation in New Mexico profoundly isolated — cut off from direct human contact and, in many cases, unconnected to the grid.

Like many of his neighbors, Castillo does not have electricity, let alone internet.

It is yet another way in which the pandemic has exposed the gap between the haves and have-nots in the U.S.

“There’s not a lot to do here. You clean up, pick up trash or build stuff. Like, I built that shed right there,” the 18-year-old Castillo said, pointing at a pitched-roof plywood shed.

“Hopefully, hopefully by next semester we’ll be going back into school,” he said. “I don’t like online. I like to be, you know, in school, learning. That's just not me. I just find it a lot easier and a lot better than just out here, not doing nothing."

The Cuba Independent School District, centered in a village of 800 people, has kept the buses running as a way to bring school to far-flung students who live on a vast checkboard of tribal, federal and county land.

On their routes, the buses carry school assignments, art supplies, meals and counselors who check in with students who are struggling with online bullying, abuse, thoughts of suicide or other problems.

The buses are a lifeline for families in the Cuba school...