Yenda Prado teaches Spanish to a pod that includes her 9-year-old son Attillio Giovanatto.
Photo: Kathleen AdlerAngie Evans was determined to make online learning for her children better this fall after a disastrous spring, when schools closed with little notice and no time to prepare.
But like many parents around the country, her race to join with other like-minded families in so-called pandemic pods was soon derailed by fears that she was teaming with the haves and leaving out the have-nots.
In some cases, these pods—in which small groups of families pool resources to supplement or replace school learning—have become the latest flashpoint in the national debate around race and privilege.
Hiring private tutors and other expenses can easily reach thousands of dollars per family, people involved in organizing such groups say.
Angie Evans with daughters Maya and Kiera Holman. Ms. Evans is looking to start a community program in East Palo Alto, Calif., to create inclusive and equitable pods.
Photo: Sean HolmanParents and educators are trying to find ways to form pods that are more equitable. Ms. Evans is developing community programs to help foster diverse pods, while a few school districts are starting to take a more active role in pod rosters to make sure they don’t segregate students or leave others out.
As schools in the San Francisco Bay Area shifted to remote learning, Ms. Evans, who moderates a Facebook group to connect Silicon Valley families looking to form pods, saw it surpass 1,500 members within a week. But nearly all the new members were from Palo Alto, an affluent suburb in California known for its concentration of tech employees. There were relatively few people from East Palo Alto, the neighboring town with a median income roughly a third of its wealthier neighbor.
“I’m watching this group grow, and as it’s growing I keep asking, ‘So who is thinking about equity?’” said Ms. Evans, a mother of two who works in affordable housing.
Ms. Evans, 36 years old, has been reaching out to nonprofits and parents she knows in East Palo Alto in hope of coming up with a pod-forming equivalent of her daughter’s summer camp. Residents from Palo Alto and the city of East Palo Alto—where the learning pods would likely be based—subsidize camp costs for low-income students.
For many parents of all income groups, inequality is just one of many issues to consider in the scramble to secure a solid education for their children during the coronavirus pandemic. Conversations around the matter exploded on the main “Pandemic Pods” Facebook group, which swelled to 30,000 members in three weeks, for a time overtaking threads about safety protocols, compensation for instructors and contract language. Some conversations turned fractious.
Many group members suggested sponsoring a student who couldn’t afford to join as a way to foster equity. Other parents shared worries about being tagged as the token low-income member of a pod.
Share Your Thoughts
How is your school district planning to cope with remote learning? Join the conversation below.
Mariposa Villaluna, whose 4-year-old is entering prekindergarten in San Francisco, said they wouldn’t want their child to be the “scholarship” student in the pod. “I can just see the situation where my kid is the scholarship kid so I can’t say anything” when issues come up, they said. “It creates a weird class dynamic.”
Some say it is unfair to put the burden of solving longstanding inequities in education on the shoulders of pandemic-stricken parents.
“Pods are not the problem,” said Nikolai Pizarro de Jesus, 40, an education consultant in Atlanta and a mother of two. “We can’t blame parents for responding to an emergency situation and taking care of their children’s needs,” she said. Rather, longstanding policies such as the way schools are funded based on property tax, which have contributed to deepening inequalities, are what’s at issue, she said. The online discussions spurred Ms. Pizarro to start her own pod chat group where the majority of the members would be Black or other minorities.
Yenda Prado is a community research fellow for the Orange County Educational Advancement Network, which has ties to University of California at Irvine School of Education. She wanted to come up with a solution that has potential to scale.
Yenda Prado and her son Attillio.
Photo: Kathleen AdlerMs. Prado, 41, is starting a pod with her rising fourth-grader and a handful of children to supplement her public school’s virtual-learning curriculum. A low-income single mother herself, Ms. Prado doesn’t think pods should be cost-prohibitive. She is working with UCI’s School of Education and the nine public schools in the network to match families interested in “podding up” with undergraduate students training to become educators. It would be free or heavily subsidized.
So far, 23 student trainees and recent graduates have signed up to offer tutoring that will start remotely.
Some public-school districts are also getting involved to head off problems of equity. The PK-8 Rooftop School in the San Francisco Unified School District said it would help organize classes into pods of seven or eight for families who want to participate.
Related Video
One-third of Rooftop School students qualify for free or reduced-price meals, while a significant portion of parents can afford private tutors.
“The question for me was, if I let these groups just form organically, who will be included? Who will be excluded?” said Nancy Bui, Rooftop’s principal.
With some school years already getting under way in parts of the country, many families are likely to be left out.
Erika Torres, a mother of three in Garland, Texas, explored pods for her 5-year-old daughter Adelaida, who is entering kindergarten. Ms. Torres hopes that her two older children—13-year-old Abiel and 10-year-old Sayuri—can soldier through online learning well enough on their own but worries about her youngest.
Erika Torres’s 13-year-old son Abiel monitored his youngest sister, Adelaida, 5, as she watched video assignments for school last spring.
Photo: Erika TorresMs. Torres said while she could help her older children with their lessons, she is at a loss as to how to teach her youngest the basics of math literacy and letter recognition. She worries Adelaida will fall behind academically and not have the chance to develop critical socialization skills.
She had hoped pods could be the answer, but even when sharing the costs of a tutor and doing a minimum of three hours a week it could cost an extra $100, financial wiggle room she doesn’t have.
She looked into parent co-op pods, where instead of paying an instructor, parents rotate watching the children. But Ms. Torres, a recruiting consultant who is on the phone with clients all day, doesn’t know how she could do that when her time came around.
—For more WSJ Technology analysis, reviews, advice and headlines, sign up for our weekly newsletter.
Write to Yoree Koh at yoree.koh@wsj.com
Copyright ©2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
"can" - Google News
August 04, 2020 at 07:00PM
https://ift.tt/2EK9Vrr
Can You Form a School Pod Without Fueling Inequality? These Groups Are Trying - The Wall Street Journal
"can" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2NE2i6G
https://ift.tt/3d3vX4n
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Can You Form a School Pod Without Fueling Inequality? These Groups Are Trying - The Wall Street Journal"
Post a Comment