Through his work as executive director of Serve Your City, a D.C.-based nonprofit focused on local at-risk youth, Maurice Cook has seen students face huge educational barriers both before and after the COVID-19 crisis began.

One student he knows is one of seven siblings who share a single computer at home and whose family had their internet cut off because they were late on their bill. This student was promoted to the next grade despite lacking home internet access in the spring term, when District schools shut down and forced students to engage in remote learning.

Another student Cook knows used to do her homework at a city library or her school’s library, because she didn’t have a suitable digital device or internet access at home. But when daylight saving time kicked off and darkness came earlier, she would head home while the sun was still out, since her family worried about her traveling alone.

“That is absolutely not equitable when you have many students from well-resourced families who never ever have these types of concerns,” says Cook, a longtime D.C. resident who lives in Capitol Hill.

Now, as families scramble to prepare for the new school year, Cook and a group of volunteers with the Ward 6 Mutual Aid Network are soliciting donations for backpacks they intend to fill with laptops and tablets, masks and hand sanitizer, and traditional school supplies like pencils, calculators, and notebooks. Through community partners, the backpacks will be distributed to D.C. public and charter school students who need functional hardware to keep up with remote learning during the pandemic.

This “Back to School Bash,” which launched last week, follows D.C. Public Schools’ July announcement that it will conduct its fall term on an all-virtual basis, from Aug. 31 through at least Nov. 6. Charter schools control their own reopening plans, but many are opting to start the academic year under an all-virtual model as well. (About half of the District’s public school students attend charters.) Donors can give directly to Serve Your City, which is serving as the hub for the Ward 6 Mutual Aid Network, or purchase supplies on an Amazon Wishlist.

The volunteer group has a preliminary goal of assembling 150 backpacks—the equivalent of raising $37,500, since each full backpack costs $250, per the campaign. By last Friday, it had raised enough money to fund 86 backpacks, or $21,500. (Some businesses are sponsoring the effort.) Cook says the organizers soon hope to increase their goal to 200 backpacks as well as hold assembly and distribution events.

But “it’s not just about providing [digital] devices” to at-risk students, he notes. “We have to create a tech support and tech engagement system [and] actually teach the family how to use” the devices. Cook adds that the group is open to bringing in technology partners to help offer that support.

Cook says he and his mutual-aid counterparts previously collected and refurbished more than 100 laptops and tablets when it became clear students would need them in the crisis. They also gave out thousands of masks and worked with food providers, including the Capital Area Food Bank and Food for All DC, to distribute hundreds of free meals.

Although DCPS, for its part, issued families more than 10,000 digital devices and 4,000 WiFi hotspots last spring and says it’s committed to making sure all its students have the technology necessary for remote schooling, some families told DCist/WAMU that they received outdated and, in certain cases, broken devices. Some students even had to use cell phones for school work. Education experts say poor technology can hamper students’ education and lead to significant learning loss, especially among younger students.

Such circumstances are part of what Cook and others call the “digital divide,” the reality that students in D.C. and elsewhere have disparate levels of access to the technology — computers, high-speed internet, and software — required to succeed in modern schools.

The pandemic has only underscored this divide, which was already particularly stark in D.C., available data show. When it comes to high-speed internet access, the District has the second-biggest gap in the U.S. between Black and Latinx students and their white peers, according to research released by four national nonprofit organizations last month. And in a recent survey, DCPS found that 44% of the more than 13,000 families who participated said they lacked access to a digital device. Additionally, 18% said their child lacked access to reliable high-speed internet or a hotspot and needed additional support.

Those disparities map onto geographic divides: Less than half of the households who live east of the Anacostia River, in wards 7 and 8, reported on U.S. Census Bureau forms that they had home broadband subscriptions, per a 2019 study by the Urban Institute. Meanwhile, more than 80% of the households in western wards 2 and 3 said they had a home broadband subscription. Wards 7 and 8 are predominately Black while wards 2 and 3 are predominantly white.

“I believe it’s just a comfort term [for] racism and classism,” Cook says of the “digital divide.” “It’s immoral and unethical that we’ve been measuring and judging students’ ability to perform without all the students having the ability to perform adequately.”

The Back to School Bash aims to change that, and Serve Your City will offer a series of online programs for students this fall. The broader volunteer group says it’s partnering with more than a dozen community-based nonprofits, including the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop, Momma’s Safe Haven, the TraRon Center, Brotha’s Huddle, and Training Grounds.

“We have all these partners that we will be giving the beautiful call to: ‘Would you like to reserve 10 backpacks for kids?'” says Cook. “It’s fun to be Black Santa Claus in July [and] August. But I shouldn’t have to, because this problem has existed for 20 years.”