Imagine being a middle school student who isn't allowed to bathe at home or wash your clothes. For a moment, forget about how concerned your parents are about your health or how you'll ever trust running water again. Put yourself in the shoes of a Flint middle schooler, with all of the social pressure and awkwardness of adolescence, and imagine coming to school feeling greasy and dirty every day — and then trying to learn.
 
"That has a dramatic impact on these middle school kids," says Dr. Lisa Hagel, superintendent Genesee Intermediate School District. "It's disruptive. And they just want to be normal."
 
For the children of Flint, the ongoing water crisis is a multifaceted distraction from and danger to their ability to learn. Fortunately, teachers, school officials and community groups are responding in kind, bringing a barrage of interventions, programs and resources to Flint's children to minimize the impact of lead exposure both today and far into the future.
 
"This is really a 20-year journey that we're on the front of," says Jerry Johnson, executive director of communications and development for Genesee ISD. "These children, whether today or five years from now, or ten years from now, wherever they are in the county, we need to be prepared to respond to symptoms and/or the affects that may present themselves as a result of lead exposure."
 
Immediate needs: Clean water, nutrition, information and normalcy
 
That 20-year journey has already begun, including efforts to create a sense of normalcy for Flint students. While approximately 15,900 K-12 students live within the Flint water boundary, as many as 10,000 students may attend districts outside the water boundary. This allows some schools to be a safe haven from the toxic water, with some offering families a place to shower and wash their clothes, restoring a critical piece of normalcy to those kids' lives.
 
Of course, another major need for those kids when they return to their Flint homes is clean water.
 
"It seems like water should be very available since everyone is donating water," says Hagel. "However, it's not always welcomed in the community when a police officer is knocking at your door with water."
 
The Genesee ISD is becoming the trusted source of water for many families, distributing water to all of their local school districts and providing busing to schools for those who do not have transportation. The ISD has also become the facilitator for getting schools proper nutrition, a proven way to combat the effects of lead exposure. Partnering with the Michigan Department of Education and others, the ISD provides snacks to young students every day in school that are calcium fortified or iron enriched.
 
"Over time, studies have shown it really helps the children combat those effects of lead," Hagel says. "Some of these children may not have accessibility to fresh fruits and vegetables or lots of dairy."
 
That trust also allows schools to be sources of information. Genesee ISD is facilitating educational meetings for parents, both one-on-one, and in groups with the health department, local pediatricians and others. They're also partnering with agencies to provide other services for both parents and educators, such as mental health education for teachers.
 
Long-term needs: Wraparound care, commitment
 
Genesee ISD has expanded staffing for its Early On program, which acts as a comprehensive set of care resources for children before they even reach school age called "wraparound care." If, for instance, a one-year-old shows signs of developmental delay, Early On allows her pediatrician to send a team of professionals to the child's home, including therapists, social workers, teachers, nurses and others, to connect with the family and offer the child early intervention services.
 
"And we can continue to support that family from [age] zero until we can get them into a preschool program at age three," says Hagel.
 
Early On reaches all Flint children who may experience developmental delays for any reason, because, as Johnson says, "it's not as if they have a sticker on their nose telling us that's a lead-exposed child." In fact, adds Hagel, about 28 days after being exposed to lead, the much-touted tests don't show the presence of lead, even though the damage has already been done.
 
"But we know that by doing the right thing," Johnson says, "we are absolutely responding to the circumstances of lead exposed children."
 
The effect of lead on a child's learning may not manifest itself until years after the initial exposure, and severe behavioral symptoms could emerge later on as well. For this reason, Genesee ISD is providing behavioral specialists to work with families to understand the risk, signs and ways to address that potential effect.
 
The long-term impact of the Flint water crisis on students and student learning is, of course, years from being known. But Genesee ISD and the many school districts, agencies and community groups with whom they've partnered aren't sitting idly by to wait and see what happened. What children in Flint need, in addition to clean water, nutrition and many, many resources, is a long-term commitment to their wellbeing.
 
"We can't be anything but positive about this," says Hagel. "We just have to hope that we can provide enough quality strategies and programs to support all these children and their families so that the impact is negated a much as we can. We are not going to lay down, curl up and lose hope."

Photos by Erica N. Rakowicz - The Source.