Caring Through Crisis: Newcomer Students and Their Educators During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

All human beings need care, including professional caregivers such as educators. What happens when a global crisis places care providers' own care needs in conflict with their duty and desire to provide care? In this article, we apply care ethics to one school district's decisions regarding newcomer English learners and their educators during the 2020-2021 academic year. Drawing on qualitative case study data from a larger multi-district, multi-state study, we examine how educators and administrators in a small urban school district in New England made sense of students' and educators' sometimes conflicting care needs during the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue that even school districts with clear commitments to equity and justice have their efforts severely limited by state and federal leadership's neglect of care/essential workers, youth, and marginalized groups. To end the ongoing pandemic and prevent future harm, we recommend that educational and political leaders prioritize human needs and relationships through a move towards "universal care" (Chatzidakis et al., 2020). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]