Gov. Newsom Stirs Private-School Pods with a Dash of Inequality
by Stephen Frank
Public School Exit - Parents Have a Choice
In July, Governor Newsom declared that California schools, covering 90% of the students in the State, will be closed and could stay closed for a year—till the summer of 2021.
Worse, a provision of the budget signed on June 29 by Newsom says school districts will be paid per student based on attendance in February, 2020. This, even if they have no students, no distance learning, no tests. The districts, unionized staff and teachers are fully paid, regardless.
From the Washington Post, July 23, 2020, “Faced with all this, parents are panicking. And for some of them, home-schooling pods—impromptu private schools led by parents or privately hired teachers—are emerging as an attractive idea.
I predicted in a column this month that parents would get creative in this fashion, but wasn’t sure it would happen. Now, I’m seeing more and more news reports and Facebook posts on the subject (“Looking for an experienced teacher in the area to teach a pod of four third graders in the fall. Message me if you know anyone.”). “I know that distance learning was not working for us,” Darcy Alkus-Barrow, the mother of a one-year-old son and six-year-old daughter, told the Marin Independent Journal. “I’ve known that for a long time.” She put out a query on social media and heard from 200 interested parents, the newspaper reported.
But the headline raises an issue: “Private ‘school pods’ are coming. They’ll worsen inequality.” Adding to that narrative, in a New York Times op-ed July 22, 2020, Clara Totenberg Green, a social and emotional learning specialist in Atlanta Public Schools, writes, “At face value, learning pods seem a necessary solution to the current crisis. But in practice, they will exacerbate inequalities, racial segregation, and the opportunity gap within schools.”
Totenberg Green concludes with these words: “Paradoxically, at a time when the Black Lives Matter movement has prompted a national reckoning with white supremacy, white parents are again ignoring racial and class inequality when it comes to educating their children.” As a result, she says, they are actively replicating the systems that many of them say they want to dismantle.
This, however, is the kind of shaming, divisive rhetoric that complicates the effects of the pandemic on families. In itself, it divides people into fragmented groups. In other words, the media narrative posits that poor and middle-class kids are not getting an education, so the children of the rich should not be allowed to get an education.
Regardless of what the Times, the Post, or Newsom say or want, people are turning away from government education. They are forced to turn away, since government is not providing learning, just a pretense, so unions can be paid and school districts can claim they are helping children.
Instead of using school district money going for nothing, let that money be spent creating pods—and other options—for children of the middle class and poor. Of course, the unions will not like that—the pods do not have teachers that pay dues to a union. Plus, parents may decide they like pods better than government education.
If closure in California continues past October, watch as enrollment in government schools spirals down. Then, when the schools open, would you trust them to stay open? How will they make up for what could be eighteen months of no education?
In the end, parents are learning they are the best determiners of their child’s education—not the state. And, many choose to do it without the strings attached to government money. The homeschool movement has proven that point.
Districts will find the voters, especially those with children, will no longer automatically approve parcel taxes or increased taxes and bonds to finance schools that may or may not be open, or that come with state-imposed, mandatory provisions such as comprehensive sexuality education or out-of-control vaccination schedules. It will convince parents that educational choice, not government monopoly, is best for their children. The winners will be education and children. The losers will be government and the unions.
With school slated to start in a few weeks, let there be no shame in looking into resources for your child be it called a pod, a homeschool group, churches opening schools, or any other option that works best for individual families of all strata. For those seeking a Biblical learning foundation, multiple resources can be found at www.PublicSchoolExit.com.
At any rate, check your options. Or, you can have your child stay away from education for 18 months—or longer. In NYC the Mayor announced he will not open their schools till there is a vaccine. Nothing stops Governor Newsom from making the same declaration.
Will parents do what is best for their children or best for government?
Stephen Frank is Senior Contributing Editor of California Political Review. Read California news that is incisive, hard-hitting, and solution-oriented with a free subscription to Steve’s daily emails at http://eepurl.com/UAspv
NOTE: Blogs published on the Judeo-Christian Caucus website are the opinions of their authors and not necessarily those of the Judeo-Christian Caucus.
