Pandemic turns public education into an unequal playing field

I believe in public education as a great equalizer; I see it as a public good. But lately I have seen the pandemic reduce public education to a partisan debate.

At the national level this debate is fueled by an all-or-nothing approach: You’re either pro opening or pro staying closed. Start school because if you don’t federal funding will be withheld. Don’t start because doing so is dangerous to everyone’s health. Like much of our public discourse, a complex public health crisis and education crisis has been simplified to a yes or no narrative.

My daughter will be in eighth grade this year. The day we got parent messages from the district, she asked me, “Mom, why didn’t anyone send the students the email you got about what is going to happen?” This question gave me pause. But when I thought about it, it’s because this has never been about the kids. These plans and solutions are not about the students. This is about adults.

I am not an epidemiologist, and I don’t have any answers that position me to suggest a path forward. As Sarah Darville pointed out in her New York Times article “Reopening Schools is Way Harder Than it Should Be,” health disparities exist and the virus data shows that people of color are disproportionately impacted. By pulling a lever to fix one problem, we may create another.

We have students missing out on touchpoints for their mental health, their daily food, and for interrupting cycles of violence at home. There are complex and sometimes competing interests. Trying to fix one thing may create new problems for our students and our communities. How should decision makers weigh the public health trade-offs? Do we even know what these trade-offs include? Have we asked our students what they need the most?

Let us be honest: Though public education struggles to serve its students, private education can. Let us be honest that though many parents can form learning pods, study groups, and recess clubs, or pay for tutoring and private school, many others cannot. The parents and caregivers working at hospitals and grocery stores and those that have been delivering my essentials to my front door have students who may be left out of this brave new world of education.

Propping up one of our enduring social services, K-12 education, with pay-to-play programming will be a lasting tragedy of these times. If some students can be in district buildings for fee-based programming sponsored by our local YMCA, why can’t more students come once a week/month/quarter for face-to-face time with their teachers? If private schools can maneuver around labor rules and certification standards to deliver in person learning five days a week, what have labor unions and public school advocates fought so long and hard for? If students with disabilities cannot get all their services during the pandemic, how are we building a better future? This economic Darwinism only deepens the inequities in the education system and society.

You win if you have internet access, a family, parents/caregivers at home, financial means to buy tutors or private school, educated caregivers, self-direction and internal drive. For all those other students, you are on your own.

This is a time of turmoil, mixed messaging and fear. Keeping our energies focused on those closest to us is a survival mechanism. But what will be lost when we finally have time to lift our heads up and look around?

It’s time to start using our voices and privilege to leverage change. To ask who is left out of this new approach to education. To start having conversations with our neighbors and others who are not like us. To enter into what poet Marilyn Nelson calls communal pondering, by asking ourselves and one another: Who are we as a nation? And who can we become?

Joellen Wilhelm is a former Olympia School District board member. Currently a student herself with children in eighth grade and third grade, she is gearing up for the fall.