The pod squad: ‘ Kids being normal again’
Children revel in activities, but many still left without
Mika Balint, 7, is happy. Each day, Mika heads through the glass doors of a San Francisco art studio next to a dry cleaners to attend her daily Zoom classes, a pair of adults helping her and a pandemic pod of four others with schoolwork, followed by lunch and an afternoon of drawing, painting or other art projects. The secondgrader’s artistic vision often includes cats.
The arrangement has helped Mika, who previously struggled with distance learning as a secondgrader at Argonne Elementary, thrive in school, and has saved the sanity of her parents, who both work, said her mom, Anat Balint.
“It just changed the whole COVID experience for us,” Balint said of the learning pod at Chris Babcock Art in the Richmond District.
“If you manage to find right solutions, your life can be pretty good. And if it’s not available, it’s really tough.”
That conundrum was exactly what many feared during the fall frenzy over pandemic pods — with public officials and other critics concerned that the academic and social support afforded to families with means would only widen inequities between the haves and have nots.
At least to some degree, they were right. While the feared mass exodus out of public schools did not come to pass, families with the financial and logistical wherewithal have banded together to form child care coops, oversee online learning or create microschools with paid teachers. Other parents have been on their own, with some children increasingly frustrated, depressed and falling further behind their peers. Too often those without a support system are children of color, who have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic and distance learning.
Public agencies and nonprofit organizations in San Francisco and other Bay Area communities have responded with free alternatives, like cityfunded hubs, where possible.
But as the debate died down and families settled in for the long haul, with distance learning still the norm for most Bay Area students, pods and community hubs have simply become part of the pandemic landscape, although thousands of children have been left out.
“Some families set up a pod at the beginning, and they’re humming along,” said Lian Chikako, a San Francisco mom who started a pandemic pod Facebook group during the summer that attracted thousands of participants across the Bay Area and the country. “There are people who came to this option later and they’re setting it up now.
“They’ve been in survival mode for seven months now.”
There’s no official tally of how many families are participating in pods. It appears relatively few have left the school system and hired fulltime teachers, Chikako said. It’s not only money, however, that restricts access to pods, but the ability to navigate the system and find families with similar needs, she added. Some parents are just too exhausted or overwhelmed to figure it out.
“They’re past their limits,” she said. “They want to find a solution and they want to figure something out, but it’s very difficult. It’s so disheartening.”
Most pod families, however, didn’t go all in, setting up a home school, buying desks, hiring a teacher and abandoning their local school.
“By far, what most people are doing is getting together with one or two other families and having some kind of arrangement like that,” she said, adding that they take turns in taking care of the kids. “That’s the vast majority, a parttime situation with an emphasis on the academic or the play.”
School district enrollment numbers back that belief, with enrollment declining in San Francisco public schools by about 500 students, with the greatest number in kindergarten, a trend mirrored nationally, with parents skipping online learning for their 5yearolds this year.
Many families, however, have had limited choices, unable to pay for support. For them, paytoplay pods are out of reach.
Others aren’t able to share in providing support or child care given work obligations or other family concerns. In some cases, private companies have stepped in to fill that void for some of those families.
The Francis Ford Coppola Winery, for example, announced this week it was sponsoring free learning hubs for children of essential workers in the community at its winery site in Geyserville, in partnership with the local YMCA. The $ 50 daily fee has been waived for the families and paid by the winery, officials said.
In San Francisco, city officials also realized the need and scrambled over the summer to come up with alternatives for disadvantaged families and essential workers, launching a learning hub program that they hoped would serve up to 6,000 students.
So far, 1,100 students are enrolled in the free hubs, where community groups provide fulltime academic support and activities at 55 city sites, including recreation centers, libraries and other locations.
The city hopes to add another 2,000 children over the next month or so, at a total cost of $ 40 million through the fall school term, but will not reach the 6,000 target given health department restrictions on the number of children that can be assigned to a group together, said Maria Su, executive director of the Department of Children, Youth and Their Families, which is coordinating the hubs.
But the program has run out of city sites to use.
“Initially there was speculation there wouldn't be a high demand for families to have their kids in a hub,” said Sherrice DorseySmith, programs and grants director at the city department. “We’ve maxed out our real estate options.”
Currently, no hubs are located in public school sites, although district officials said that is a possible option, but would likely require the blessing of teachers and other labor unions.
The city could also hit up private companies for space,
Smith said.
“It’s a first time for all of us doing something like this,” she said of the challenges, adding that it’s worth the trouble. “At the end of the day, children are smiling, excited for learning, back to their old selves.”
Bay Area philanthropists also jumped into the pandemic pod movement this fall, offering the opportunity for young people to spend the day with artists, doing schoolwork as well as drumming, dancing, drawing and more.
“This seems like a moment for arts education to be performing triage,” said Frances Phillips, programs director for the Walter and Elise Haas Fund, which is helping fund the pods. “We know that arts education works its magic.”
The program is free to families, with several locations throughout the city and more planned in the coming weeks, serving a total of about 200 students.
At one of the sites, Dance Mission Theater, 14 elementaryage students, all wearing masks, finished up their morning Zoom classes on a recent day before walking over to a nearby church, where they spent 30 minutes dancing on an outdoor terrace.
Supervisor Hillary Ronen, on a visit to see the program, stood off to the side, as the children swayed and sashayed across the pavement.
“Oh my god,” she said. “Kids being normal. This is the best thing I’ve seen since March.”
Following the dance session, the students returned to the studio for a lesson on Taiko drumming, modified to limit the traditional chants so as to reduce the possibility of droplets or aerosols escaping their masks.
It was Ameyalli Flores Freeman’s first time pounding one of the large drums, although it appeared that the 7yearold had some natural talent at it.
“I know,” she said of that observation, adjusting her unicorncovered shorts and rainbow pony shirt.
The sixweek art pod offered an escape from her home, Ameyalli said, where she’d been cooped up for months.
The pandemic “sucks,” she said. “You don’t get to see your friends, you don’t get to hug anyone. It’s really hard to breathe sometimes ( with the mask).”
Her pod classmate, Hazel EsaMurphy, 10, agreed.
“It has really sucked,” she said. “I’m a social person. This is great making new friends.”
Nearby, Ronen’s smile had faded as she contemplated the number of students in the city who were still struggling at home.
“This is how it should be every day for every kid,” Ronen said. “The fact that not every kid can have this in the pandemic is a failure. This should be for every kid.”