1/ I am finally coming up for air from a post I did on FB the other night. After posting late at night, I woke up and found I was quoted in the Washington Post story on the pods. (A thread) https://twitter.com/alimcollins/status/1284199796094332928

2/ My quote read: “The frantic activity I am witnessing of families soliciting private tutors for their children at the tune of hundreds to thousands of dollars to ‘home-school’ their children is frightening to many Black parents and parents of color,”

3/ While I appreciate being quoted, it did not fully represent the larger questions I was trying to pose. With that in mind, I’m sharing the entirety of my original post.

4/ To be fair, my post was inspired by this post by @JPBGerald which captured so many of the feelings I was having about pods. In my FB post I shared a screenshot and asked:

“Can we talk about all this? It’s really problematic. For real. https://twitter.com/jpbgerald/status/1283386928881176576?s=21

5/ Some questions about Pandemic Pods:

- Who is present in these spaces? Who is missing?
- Who benefits? Who is excluded?
- How does this elevate and support anti racism? Integration? Public education?
- What narratives do pods reinforce about public education?

6/
- How does this fit into a culture of capitalism, individualism and consumerism vs. socialism, collectivism, and community-responsive practice?

7/ - In this time of crisis, how do these actions support families with the greatest need? Families struggling with food insecurity? Housing insecurity? Single parents? Parents of students with disabilities? Parents of students learning English? Parents of undocumented students?

8/
- (And also, who is Littldata, the company behind these Bay Area FB groups? Is this an example of disaster capitalism?)

9/ I am hearing from many families that the explosion of this conversation is very concerning. As families we are all experiencing a loss because we cannot “go-back-to-school” or work this fall like we had hoped when we began shelter-in-place this spring.

10/ Every day we see a virus spiraling out of control and there is a lack of leadership at the state and a national level.

11/ Our gov’t failure to act is causing deep distress in our communities and is leading to econ. devastation, emotional depression and loss of life which we have never experienced in our lifetimes.

12/ It is understandable that folks want to take action in order to feel some control in this scary uncertain time. Taking action is a healthy response to crisis and trauma.

13/ Nonetheless, the frantic activity I am witnessing of families soliciting teachers and private tutors for their children at the tune of hundreds to thousands of dollars to “homeschool” their children is frightening to many Black parents and parents of color.

14/ It feels exclusionary to many families with students with disabilities who require one-on-one support. Parents who don’t speak English, or don’t have time to participate in all this online research, networking & interviewing don’t even know these conversations are happening.

15/ If you put BLM in your social media feed... If you have ever protested children being put into cages... If you believe in the promise of collective solutions to social ills, e.g. libraries, public parks and public education... You must ask yourself...

16/ Ask yourself how your involvement in forming “pods” promotes or diminishes our collective investment in historically marginalized communities: Black, Native American, Latinx, immigrant, low-income, homeless, disabled, etc.

17/ Some context to consider... After Brown v. Board of Education mandated integration, white families pulled their children out of public schools in droves and began homeschooling and hiring teachers and tutors to educate their children in their homes.

18/ This led to segregation academies, and later an explosion of private schools which allowed our education system to remain segregated. With white and affluent families out of the public education system, funding and public investment decreased as well.

19/ In contrast Black communities formed “Freedom Schools” in the 1960s to counter the “sharecropper education” received by so many African Americans and poor whites.

20/ The Black Panther Party also developed childcare, educational enrichment and one of the very first meal programs which eventually led to federally funded free-and-reduced school lunch programs in public schools.

21/ Please educate yourselves on the history of segregation and it’s relationship to private education. Please educate yourselves on “white flight” and “freedom schools” and collectivist vs. capitalist models of childcare and education.

22/ We need solutions to the challenges we are facing that don’t further separate us from our neighbors. We need solutions that pool resources for the benefit of ALL of us and that center families and children most in need.”