Low income kids and phones

So I teach middle school English in a low SES school. Almost all of our students are on free lunch, and we are a small town in a state that has been hit very hard by the decline of manufacturing. <br><br>Now with the pandemic, I’ve been seeing a lot more of our kids’ home lives. Some lack devices entirely (we have 1:1 but they don’t have them at home), some lack reliable internet, some have parents who are not home to supervise. <br><br>My question is how are we as teachers expected to help these students? We have recently received training on some new software to teach virtually in the fall, but these kids literally lack the means to access it. We are talking about cutting our sports programs to fund the school but if kids don’t have devices or internet at home then what is the point of remote learning? <br><br>My district is recently out of a 6-week lockdown that kept kids home. It was a complete disaster. Test scores are way down, attendance is down, and grades are low. Kids are falling behind and I don’t know how to help. <br><br>Are we just expected to fail these kids?