Editor’s Note: Welcome to Weekly Education: Coronavirus special edition. Each week, we will explore how the pandemic is reshaping and upending education as we know it across the country, from pre-K through grad school. We will explore the debates of the day, new challenges and talk to movers and shakers about whether changes ushered in now are here to stay.

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HBCUs TAKE A GAMBLE — The stakes were high for historically Black colleges and universities this semester. The institutions had to weigh fears about coronavirus spread for an especially vulnerable group of people against the fear that students would take a semester off, never to return and be saddled with debt without a degree to show for it. Returning to campus, at least part time, turned out to be the most popular choice for HBCUs.

— HBCU students are overwhelmingly African American, and the "population has just point blank been the most disparately impacted by the pandemic," said Lodriguez Murray, the United Negro College Fund's senior vice president of public policy and government affairs. "Even so, a number of the institutions felt it imperative to come back in person."

— The bet, with a hand from the Trump administration and Congress, has largely paid off. Colleges across the country have seen their enrollment dip, but some HBCUs have seen more students enter their freshman cohorts and staved off furloughs. "For example, one of the largest HBCUs in the country, North Carolina A&T State University, they had one of the largest freshman classes ever and their enrollment is at an all time high," Thurgood Marshall College Fund President Harry L. Williams said. Other HBCUs also saw a 42 percent increase in their freshman classes, he added.

— The majority of public HBCUs took a hybrid approach this fall to provide instruction. "Our campuses have opened up, and a lot of the campuses are in the South, and a lot of the southern states are largely open," Williams said. HBCUs also have been able to keep their infection rates low, he added.

— Nearly 73 percent of all students attending public HBCUs qualify for a Pell Grant, which means they are among the lowest-income students. Williams said many of their students face serious financial challenges and come from rural areas that may not have access to broadband and other resources if they had to stay home. "Coming to a campus is better for a lot of our students than to stay in their existing communities," Williams said. "The drive to get back to the campuses is at a higher level for us because the campuses create this normalcy of life, and it provides a tremendous relief for some of our students."

You Tell Us

IT'S MONDAY, NOV. 16. WELCOME TO MORNING EDUCATION. Ping me at [email protected] to chat. Or reach out to my colleagues, Nicole Gaudiano at [email protected], Juan Perez Jr. at [email protected] or Michael Stratford at [email protected]. Share event listings: [email protected]. And follow us on Twitter: @Morning_Edu and @POLITICOPro.

Spring semester is quickly approaching. What are your plans for reopening your school? Let us know.

Last week, we asked what schools, families and government should do to ensure elementary and high school students stay up to speed after a year of disrupted learning. Here's what some of you told us:

— "This school year — and next — should be extended into the summer. We should have widespread vaccine usage by June, so let's keep schools open through the summer. Take the month of August off and return for the next school year a month late. Then extend next school year to address the late start. It would be one shorter summer, but we could start the 22-23 school year on time and return to the normal schedule." — Carlye Morgan, Tampa, Fla.

— "Any effort must be based on measures of learning loss or progression for individual students. Aggregate data should be evangelized to the community along with a plan to shift from age/grade cohorts to individualized mastery pathways. In effect, every student should have an IEP (including those who moved ahead during lockdown). Standards-based assessment must continue and serve as a constructive feedback loop for personalized instruction but should be (temporarily) decoupled from high stakes." — Steven Hodas, New York City

Coronavirus

TARGETED WHITE HOUSE SUPPORT — HBCU leaders say the Trump administration made good on a promise to send about half a million rapid coronavirus tests to 71 of their institutions. They deliver “reliable test results in 15 minutes or less,” according to HHS, and were shipped out starting in late September.

— Distribution was based on the total number of faculty, staff and students within a specific HBCU, according to an HHS document. “Testing may be used for diagnosis in symptomatic individuals, contact tracing, baseline surveillance or other needs as determined by the HBCU leadership,” HHS said.

— Each institution was slated to receive between 3,000 and 10,000 tests initially, and more will “be resupplied as often as required.” One aim is to extend the testing to at least some of the communities surrounding an HBCU, Williams said. “The goal here is to identify those communities that could be impacted the most,” he said. “And so, HBCUs, they were identified, and some of our campuses are actually set up to do the testing in their community. People from the community trust them to provide them with the test.”

— One thing to watch for is whether more tests will be distributed, especially as colleges make plans for 2021: "The next semester would be on the next president and it will be on their HHS, because the next semester would begin some point in late January or early February," Murray said. This is important to watch, especially since coronavirus testing capacity and equipment are starting to be in short supply.

IN MEMORIAM — Saint Augustine’s University President Irving Pressley McPhail was an HBCU leader who died from complications of Covid-19 this term. He was president of the North Carolina school for three months.

— College presidents from big-name institutions including Harvard’s Lawrence Bacow, the University of Texas at Austin’s Gary Fenves, Notre Dame’s John Jenkins, and others have contracted the coronavirus but have since recovered. McPhail’s death is a stark reminder of how the coronavirus has disproportionately affected communities of color, often leading to the worst possible outcome.

Preparing for President Biden

TRUMP’S RECORD WITH HBCUs — President Donald Trump, during his first year in office, signed an executive order that moved the White House Initiative on HBCUs from the Education Department to the White House. The change was aimed at giving those schools better access to the president and to try and bolster Trump’s relationship with them.

— An executive order on HBCUs has been issued by every president since Jimmy Carter. In 1980, Carter created a federal program to “overcome the effects of discriminatory treatment and to strengthen and expand” the schools. Ronald Reagan established the White House Initiative on HBCUs, George H.W. Bush created the presidential advisory board, Bill Clinton required a senior level executive in each agency to oversee implementation of the order and George W. Bush moved the initiative to the Education Department’s office of the secretary.

— With the move to the White House, Trump left his mark on the order but also effectively one-upped Barack Obama, who had a rocky relationship with HBCUs. Before the executive order was passed, Johnny Taylor, who chaired the President’s Board of Advisors of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, said he had previously requested that the Obama administration make the same addition to the executive order, but “it was never responded to.”

FROM HOWARD TO THE WHITE HOUSE — Kamala Harris, the first Black and South Asian American woman vice president, is also the first Howard University and HBCU grad to step into the role. Let’s break down her record on HBCU policy:

— On the campaign trail: During her presidential bid, Harris outlined a plan that called for $60 billion in new federal investments in HBCUs and minority-serving institutions, with $10 billion specifically for research and STEM fields. And, she proposed a $50 billion competitive grant program at the Education Department to fund “undergraduate and graduate scholarships, fellowships and internships for students” in STEM at HBCUs and MSIs.

— In Congress, Harris has been an active participant in the HBCU Fly-in, an annual lobbying effort by the colleges. During her bid for president, she described her experience at Howard to HBCU Fly-in participants: “It’s an environment that nurtures you to understand the context in which you exist in addition to those who came before you, the expectation about what you’ll produce and the path that you will create for others to come, and to teach you also that you don't have to accept any false choices about what it means to be young, gifted and black.”

BIDEN-HARRIS HBCU PROMISES — “If elected, we will invest more than $70 billion in HBCUs and minority-serving institutions, including grants to lower student costs, improve student retention, and increase graduation rates,” Harris wrote in an opinion piece for HBCU Times.

— This promise stem’s from President-elect Joe Biden’s initial plan for higher education. The plan calls for 200 new “centers of excellence” for research and to connect students who are underrepresented in fields. It also promises to double Pell Grants and reduce monthly student loan payments for income-based repayment plans, and offers free tuition for students at community colleges.

— “And we will forgive all undergraduate tuition-related federal student debt from private HBCUs and MSIs and public colleges for those with incomes up to $125,000,” Harris wrote.

In Congress

WHO SAVED HBCUs? On the campaign trail, Trump largely touted his signing of the FUTURE Act, which permanently reauthorizes more than $250 million in annual funding for HBCUs and MSIs. The president repeatedly has credited himself with “saving” HBCUs.

— Trump’s “savior” comments have invited criticism, especially from top leaders. “With all due respect to the president, it bears emphasizing that HBCUs did not need to be, quote, ‘saved,’ and we weren’t going out of business,” said Michael L. Lomax, UNCF's president and CEO, in his 2020 State of the HBCU address. “Rumors of the demise of HBCUs are not only greatly exaggerated, but they are false.”

— “What happened in Congress on an annual basis over the last three years made this funding that everyone is so bipartisanly proud of,” Murray said, throwing the credit to lawmakers. “There are three branches of government and two of them were actively involved in that process — one was really actively involved and the other one just signed the bill.”

— These are the key items that made the FUTURE Act possible, according to Murray: UNCF's economic impact report that "explained to a lawmakers the facts and figures of the impacts of schools in their area;" Rep. Alma Adams from North Carolina, the "Godmother Of HBCUs;" and the fact that "for the first time in history, there were three black U.S. senators in Congress that had an HBCU connection."

— Also key to negotiating the bipartisan agreement were: Sens. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), Doug Jones (D-Ala.), Richard Burr (R-N.C.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), HELP Chair Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), and HELP ranking member Patty Murray (D-Wash.).

JONES' OUTGOING LEGACY — The Alabama Democratic senator lost his bid for reelection to Republican Tommy Tuberville, the former Auburn University football coach. Given Jones' role in passing the FUTURE Act, his loss stings HBCU supporters.

— "Because he visited all of the campuses to get elected, he came to the Senate understanding their needs,” Murray said. “To me, that really changed dynamics on the Hill because I was told by appropriations staff all the time that not enough people, not enough senators, ask for your requests. Jones changed that, and he started asking and people started joining him.”

— “I'd be hard pressed to find some more supportive of historically black colleges, first-generation college students, or students from low-income backgrounds than him," she added.

LOOKING TO ANOTHER STIMULUS — Williams said the CARES Act stimulus cash "was a major game changer for our campuses and it didn't give us anything to put us ahead, but it just kept us whole." HBCUs largely did not have to go through "massive layoffs and massive just furloughs because of the additional funds," he said and the "federal government played a critical role in supporting students."

— HBCUs are urging Congress to pass another stimulus bill. Even though the pandemic seems to be worsening as winter approaches, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has signaled that he only wants a slim stimulus. Negotiations are largely on ice.

Syllabus

— Trump’s student loan cliff threatens chaos for Biden: POLITICO

— U.S. colleges hit with 43 percent drop in new international students: POLITICO Pro

— How higher ed helped flip 5 states in the 2020 election: The Chronicle of Higher Education

— Judge: Trump appointee lacked authority to rein in DACA: POLITICO

— Biden’s Education Department will move fast to reverse Betsy DeVos’ policies: The New York Times