Name: Bay Area parents rush to form ‘pandemic pods’ for the school year. The backlash is fierce
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Bay Area parents rush to form ‘pandemic pods’ for the school year. The backlash is fierce

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This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigateThe fear and desperation erupted just over a week ago as parents realized schools would not reopen in August as hoped, and their kids would be stuck in front of screens, again, learning to read and solve equations despite a largely disastrous two months of distance learning in the spring.Privileged parents — those with money and connections — banded together to do something about it.In the past week alone, tens of thousands of families in the Bay Area and across the country have found each other on Facebook, created contact lists organized by city or school, and formed “pandemic pods” — in some cases offering educators $100 an hour or more to tutor or teach small groups in the homes of the children or the teachers. Then came the backlash.What about children whose families can’t afford to participate — usually the students most at risk of falling behind? critics asked. The ability of those with means to form pods would probably exacerbate the wide gap between the haves and have-nots, they said.Parents forming pods, many expressing guilt over the inequity of the situation, suggested the wealthier might cover the costs for low-income children, disproportionately Black or brown children, to mitigate the disparity. The idea to “add a person of color and stir” response, according to one Facebook post, was widely panned.In recent days, the discord over pods has grown as fast as the movement itself.Yet in the Bay Area, public officials, parents and community advocates say the guilt and the fights are a waste of time when there isn’t a moment to spare. The school year starts for many in less than a month.“There’s no stopping this train,” San Francisco Supervisor Hillary Ronen said of the pods. “The parents are doing it anyway.”Locally, pandemic pods are just one piece — and a welcome one — in a larger network of solutions to meet the needs of children during distance learning and school closures, Ronen said.You can’t be mad at pods, said Lakisha Young, director of Oakland Reach, a parent-run group working with underserved families.“But they can’t be the only thing that’s catching fire across the country that’s trying to solve this,” she said. “That privilege is a very small percentage of this country.”The spring experiment with the sudden shift to remote instruction for millions of students earned widespread F’s. So it’s no surprise that families are looking for options to mitigate the including a lack of personalized teaching, narrow curriculum, child care conflicts and little social interaction.“I think it was clear to us and I think every parent and student in the country last year when we experienced school via Zoom for the first time, it doesn’t work for the vast majority of students,” said Oakland mom Hallie Montoya Tansey. “It’s understandable parents want to solve these problems themselves.”Tansey wants her daughter to have a somewhat normal kindergarten experience and is considering a pod organized by families at her school, despite concerns about equity.Such arrangements offer parents a relatively easy solution to their fears and working lives, allowing small groups of children to get academic support and in-person interaction in a home environment.In some cases, such groups plan to replace formal education, with teachers hired to instruct in a newly formed home-based private school. In other cases, the pods are looking to supplement distance learning with an in-person tutor or teacher to guide students through their studies. Other families want to create a co-op, with parents taking turns at child care while students participate in Zoom classes or study.The cost can reach $2,000 per month per student, depending on the format, parents say.San Francisco mom Whitney Britton plans to host a pod at her house. She and her partner were laid off recently, and bringing in four or five other children at $20 per hour for the length of the school day would help with the bills while providing a slightly more normal kindergarten experience for her daughter, she said.“It’s definitely not something I ever saw myself participating in,” she said. “Sometimes you gotta roll with the punches.”Coronavirus CoverageFor teacher Mark Stone, the pod idea was also enticing. Distance learning was “a total mess,” with only a third to half of his students participating at Alameda Community Learning Center, a charter school for grades six to 12.In addition, Stone has diabetes and fears that a return to in-person instruction wouldn’t be safe when schools do reopen. But he’s watching the growth of the pod movement with some trepidation.“They’re not intending to cause harm, but they are,” said Stone, who’s now looking at online tutoring and other career options. “We’re in a situation that we have to face the fact that we have several bad choices.”At Young didn’t wait until summer to start worrying. As soon as schools closed in March — just as the coronavirus hit the Bay Area — she knew many families would need help.Initially, the organization raised money for a relief fund, distributing $350,000 to 1,000 families.But the money couldn’t address the lost learning she was seeing among the children in those families, so the nonprofit started what she called a K-8 summer learning hub, all online, with students learning academics in the morning and enrichment classes like cooking, science and martial arts in the afternoon.The hub is the opposite of pods. The nonprofit raises money for its services and pays parents to participate — $250 for each child in grades three through eight and $500 for those in kindergarten through second grade. Parents of younger students are required to be online with them.Reach pays certificated teachers to conduct the academic classes and provides devices and tech support for its 187 students, as well as all the food, pans and other supplies for the cooking and science classes.“Before COVID, 30% of black and brown kids were reading at grade level,” she said. “It became clear this was something we needed to do.”While the program is virtual, it doesn’t look or feel like the distance learning that families experienced in the spring, parents and teachers said. It has more of that interactive feel families want from pods — despite classes of 20 students.The kids feel like they are part of something, said Michael Jefferson, who teaches martial arts to the older students from Frohm’s Martial Arts in Oakland.Early on, he helped the students set up their home space, adjusting the lighting and camera angle so everyone could be seen. Each week, they have to show him via the computer camera that their personal dojo — or martial arts studio — is clean and tidy.“I’m very intentional about knowing I can see them,” he said.When someone sneezes, he says, “Bless you.”It’s that kind of interaction that has made all the difference, said parent Dvoya Tatum, whose two sons, in grades two and five, participate in the hub.Her oldest son, Jamal, flailed in distance learning in the spring. He hated school, she said.Tracking COVID-19 cases across the Bay Area and California.Now: “He’s so excited going to the program,” she said. “He’s got his alarm set. He knows to charge his computer the night before.”Tatum, who works at a local charter school, had the same worries as many parents about continued distance learning and whether her sons’ future was at risk because of the substandard academic experience.“I felt like, ‘How am I going make sure that my kids don’t fall behind?’” she said, adding that a costly pod wasn’t an option. “Even though I have a pretty good job, I know that’s not something I can afford.”Young hopes the hub can continue in the fall, either as a full-time online school or a supplement to families doing distance learning with Oakland Unified or other schools.That will require money and bureaucratic wrangling, Young said. But it’s about creativity and imaginative thinking in a trying time.“We’re kind of in a fight of our lives, and we need someone to make it easy to do what we need to do,” she said. “Why can’t the hub and the pods work together?“We’re not having the right conversations.”In San Francisco, Supervisor Ronen sees the school closures as an all-hands-on-deck moment. Distance learning could last all school year. Parents need to work. Children need support. And it doesn’t appear the federal government will come to the rescue with significant funding to help districts and families navigate an impossible situation, she said.“Instead of shaming parents with means in the public system who are self-organizing, who are creating a solution, let’s embrace it,” she said. “We need those who can afford it to chip in for the entire system.”What those parents need is guidance on how to do that safely and responsibly and in alignment with the school system.Then the city can focus on those who need help, said Ronen, who has called for a formal hearing on the issue.On Thursday, Mayor London Breed announced the across the city, where families can drop off elementary-age children during the school day to get academic help and other services. The program seeks to serve 6,000 students in libraries, recreation centers and community centers beginning Sept. 14, about a month after the academic year starts.The city will prioritize low-income families, children in public housing and the foster care system, homeless youths, and others in living situations that make remote learning particularly challenging. Nonprofit agencies and other experienced providers will run the hubs.Meanwhile, the school district is still working on the details of distance learning in the fall and negotiating with labor unions on teacher and staff working conditions. Beyond that, officials are looking at using outdoor learning and other options to support students when safe enough to do so, said Gentle Blythe, a spokeswoman for San Francisco Unified.With various puzzle pieces in place, the goal is to ensure all 53,000 students in the district get everything they need to succeed in school, officials said.“For good reason right now, families are looking for a way to be safe and in the presence of other children, and allow families the opportunity to work,” Blythe said. “This is people coming up with creative solutions to respond to the moment.”Yet with the vast majority of California’s 6 million public school students starting the school year in distance learning, it’s unclear how many districts or cities will have a plan in place to help families that can’t afford or accommodate a pod or other support situation.“We’re about to have the least equitable school year in modern history,” Oakland’s Tansey said. “That’s where we’re headed without intervention.”Jill Tucker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: Twitter:Tracking COVID-19 cases across the Bay Area and California.

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigateThe fear and desperation erupted just over a week ago as parents realized schools would not reopen in August as hoped, and their kids would be stuck in front of screens, again, learning to read and solve equations despite a largely disastrous two months of distance learning in the spring.Privileged parents — those with money and connections — banded together to do something about it.In the past week alone, tens of thousands of families in the Bay Area and across the country have found each other on Facebook, created contact lists...

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Jill Tucker knows the rules of tether ball and sort of gets why one might need to solve for X and so she is the k-12 education writer at the SF Chronicle.

Jill Tucker

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Bay Area parents rush to form ‘pandemic pods’ for the school year. The backlash is fierce

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