Human beings are amazingly adaptable, and the pandemic has given parents cause to come up with ways to address the conundrum of education, or lack thereof, for their kids. There is no doubt that keeping public schools closed will have a deleterious impact on the education. Kids are only twelve once, and they don’t get a pandemic Mulligan. Miss that year of education, of socialization, of living, and it’s a big deal. Then again, dying or killing grandpa isn’t good either.

And despite the rosy schemes of teaching kids riding on unicorns, there is no plan that doesn’t either defy Newton’s Third Law or require an acid-trip level belief in fairies. On top of it all, parents are constrained to stay home with their kids unless they’re of the “lock ’em in the closet under the stairs” view. So inventiveness is kicking in, for everyone’s sake. It may be a very pale effort compared to the real deal, but it’s better than nothing.

Meet the Pod Kids.

As school districts across the nation announce that their buildings will remain closed in the fall, parents are quickly organizing “learning pods” or “pandemic pods” — small groupings of children who gather every day and learn in a shared space, often participating in the online instruction provided by their schools. Pods are supervised either by a hired private teacher or other adult, or with parents taking turns.

If someone, or some group, can find and afford a private teacher, that’s great. Even if it’s just parents taking turns, that’s good too, because it’s better than the fiasco of pretending that a couple hours of Zoom education where few students bother to show is doing the trick. It might not be much, but at least they trying, using any resource they can for their children. And isn’t that a good thing?

At face value, learning pods seem a necessary solution to the current crisis. But in practice, they will exacerbate inequities, racial segregation and the opportunity gap within schools. Children whose parents have the means to participate in learning pods will most likely return to school academically ahead, while many low-income children will struggle at home without computers or reliable internet for online learning.

Granted, there are children of poor, hard-working families who lack computers and internet, but how does that prevent them from forming pods? Is there no parent around to lead them, to teach them? If not, who is taking care of these kids in the first place? If not, what is gained by these poor kids by denying those kids whose parents are doing what they can to help whatever minimal benefit might be gained by being part of a pod?

As is the case across the country, white families largely socialize with one another, white children are disproportionately represented in gifted and talented programming, and white parents dominate parent committees.

Are black children who are gifted or talented being denied programming? Are black parents denied a seat on committees? Are white families socializing with their neighbors, and there is no black family next door? Why is it this disparate representation happens?

This segregation will only intensify if learning pods become the norm. When people choose members of their pod, they will choose people they know and trust. In a country where 75 percent of white people report that the network of people with whom they discuss important matters is “entirely white, with no minority presence,” it is not a leap to predict that learning pods will mirror the deeply racially segregated lives of most Americans.

That there are existing racial disparities in America is obviously true, but what does that have to do with pods? Even if there were no such disparities, black people are still only 13% of the population, so most white families would still have almost no relationship with black families. There aren’t enough to go around. Should black parents rent out their black kids as tokens for white pods in white neighborhoods? Is there any reason why parents forming pods might want to limit participation to the children less likely to infect them?

Parents are also more likely to join pods with families who have similarly low exposure to the coronavirus. This seemingly rational impulse will, in practice, exclude many Black and Latinx families, who are disproportionately infected by the virus. In New York City, a staggering 75 percent of all the city’s essential workers are people of color. In Georgia, Black people make up a third of the population, but, as of the end of June, they accounted for about half of all COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths in the state.

Is this the fault of parents who form pods or is it just racist not to seek out ways to enhance the likelihood of killing grandpa?

Whatever parents ultimately decide, they must understand that every choice they make in their child’s education, even the seemingly benign, has the potential to perpetuate racial inequities rooted in white supremacy. The history of public schooling in this country is one in which white parents have repeatedly abandoned public schools, or resisted integration efforts at every turn. As a result, schools are more segregated today than during the late 1960s.

Parents are trying to do their best to come up with ways to educate their children. If it’s just white parents, then why aren’t black parents doing this as well? If parents can afford to do better by their kids, are they under some social justice duty to not use whatever resources they can muster so their white kids will be just as under-educated as black kids to avoid “perpetuating racial inequities”? Sorry, Timmy, but as long as some black kids can’t read, neither can you?

We can either take this moment to continue that pattern by retreating into the comfort of our own advantages, or we can act to dismantle racist educational policies, fight for equitable distribution of school funding and build authentic community with one another.

The writer of this gibberish is a “social emotional learning specialist in Atlanta Public Schools.” She has no answer as to how to help a black kid to learn, but she wants to make damn sure that no white child whose parent has become part of this pod thing will learn either. This is social justice, making sure no child learns if there is no black parent who will form a pod, whether because they can’t or education is just not their priority.