“The more the children know you and trust you, the more they’re willing to engage in what you’re trying to teach them,” said Susana Aguilar, one of ’s “literacy liberators.” 

The evaluation, from the Center on Reinventing Public Education at Arizona State University, calls community members “untapped pools of talent” in the effort to improve student achievement.

Oakland Unified’s model, said researcher and lead author Ashley Jochim, also has broader implications for how schools teach basic skills in reading and math. For too long, she said, one teacher has been responsible for modifying lessons to meet the needs of 25 or more students. 

“This model is clearly failing students and puts extraordinary demands on educators, especially coming out of the pandemic,” she said. “Oakland’s tutoring model shows what’s possible when we create the conditions needed to individualize instruction based on students’ learning needs.”

‘How far could they go?’ 

The Oakland REACH to improve literacy instruction before the pandemic and joined with the local NAACP to push the district to adopt a research-based reading program.

The group criticized the quality of remote learning during COVID. But then it created its own online to focus on structured reading skills and saw promising results. After five weeks of virtual summer learning, some as much as they would from two months of in-person reading instruction, data showed. 

“We saw these big gains. You can’t ignore that,” said Lakisha Young, the organization’s CEO. “We had to ask, ‘What does this look like for a paraprofessional who is appropriately trained, trusted and coached? How far could they go?’ ”

The group expanded to serve students during the school year, and last year, received a significant boost from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, who donated $3 million to the organization. Its work, and its , has evolved, Young said, from “demanding to building.”

In statement to ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ, a district spokesman said its literacy efforts “have only been amplified and supported by partnering with a dedicated organization such as The Oakland REACH.”

As a bridge between the district and the predominantly Black and Hispanic community it serves, The Oakland REACH played a key role in finding a diverse mix of tutors that included a retired educator, a former security guard and several stay-at-home moms. 

“It’s personal to me because my daughter had to go through the process of long-distance learning,” Aguilar said in released with the report. “I completely relate to all the challenges that parents had.”

The prospective tutors completed an eight-week fellowship in which , a nonprofit trainer, taught them how to implement the district’s . But their preparation — the topic of a  â€” was carefully designed to address the challenges facing Black, Hispanic and lower-income job candidates who are juggling work and family life. The sessions included child care, meals, transportation and a $1,675 stipend.

The fellowship also gave tutors space to discuss personal experiences with literacy instruction — their own and their children’s.

“Their personal struggles,” according to the paper, “deepened their sense of commitment to students’ literacy needs.” 

In total, The Oakland REACH recruited 46 parents and other community members to tutor small groups of K-2 students who were reading below grade level. In a survey, about a third of the tutors said they felt somewhat or very unprepared to teach young children when they started, but grew more skilled with the help of ongoing coaching from FluentSeeds.

Aguilar now works at Manzanita SEED Elementary School, where her daughter Aliah is in fourth grade. She described the school, which has a mostly low-income Black, Hispanic and Asian student population, as a “melting pot.”

“When you’re serving underprivileged communities,” she said, “kids are more receptive if they see people who look like them.” 

Uneven results, ‘budget challenges’ 

The program has made its greatest impact in kindergarten. From fall 2022 to spring 2023, tutored students gained nearly a full extra year of learning on the widely used iReady assessment, compared to those who did not receive tutoring, according to the report. But there was little to no difference in outcomes between tutored and non-tutored students in first and second grade.

Those results are not unique to Oakland. Another recent study on a virtual early literacy tutoring model called OnYourMark found minimal impact in second grade. The lack of growth could be due to a mismatch between tutoring and testing, said Susanna Loeb, a Stanford University professor who leads a nationwide tutoring research center and conducted the OnYourMark research.

If tutors are focusing on skills that an assessment doesn’t measure, “we won’t see learning gains, even if they have them,” she said. 

Overall, however, she described Oakland’s tutoring effort as a “proof point” that shows how well-trained community members with credibility among families “can meaningfully improve student learning.”

But there’s still room for improvement. Many tutors were drawn to the position because they care about Oakland students. But the current $16- to $18-per-hour pay rate is a barrier to recruiting more tutors and keeping them, Jochim wrote. 

Aguilar, a single mother, said that while being a tutor is “meaningful work,” it doesn’t pay enough to replace the salary she used to make at her previous human resources job in  Silicon Valley. She makes ends meet by delivering groceries for Instacart and recruiting students for a local college.

The district’s “” make the tutoring initiative a “promising, yet still-fragile set of reforms,” Jochim wrote. In March, the board the positions, but rejected the plan. The district has relied on federal relief funds to help pay the tutors and is “working out funding for these important positions” once those funds expire next year, a spokesman said.

The recent results should prompt Oakland to stop funding “less effective approaches” to tutoring and invest in what works, Loeb said. “This model is a good example of how community groups can provide these resources.”

Disclosure: Walton Family Foundation, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and The Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies provide financial support to and ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ.

provides all teachers with a 10% salary increase retroactive to Nov. 1, 2022, plus a one-time payment of $5,000.

This was a strike with unusual features, but they will become increasingly common as teachers unions continue to win generous compensation packages and greater influence over district operations. School systems will be forced to deal with these tactics, not just in California but wherever state law allows them to be employed.

Unfair labor practice strikes

A standard teacher strike over wages and working conditions — otherwise known as an economic strike — requires a long administrative process. In California, this means formally declaring an impasse in negotiations, which is followed by analysis and a report by an independent fact-finder.

But there’s a loophole. If the employer commits an unfair labor practice, such as bargaining in bad faith, the union can legally walk out at any time.

The problem for school districts, and parents who want their kids in school, is that determining whether the union’s complaint has any merit cannot be made instantaneously. It may take months, or even years, before the state labor board can hear the case and render a ruling.

If there is no unfair labor practice, then the strike is illegal and penalties can be levied. But by then, it’s too late to matter, and the union has probably already won a settlement that ensures it will come out ahead financially.

So while the strike is ostensibly called to bring an end to specific alleged unfair labor practices by the district, its real purpose is to jump-start contract negotiations and bring about an advantageous settlement.

Union-friendly publications have articles on how to precipitate an unfair labor practice by an employer and so legitimize a strike. Among the suggested methods are to “” or to cite employers for “.”

Since 2019, school employees unions have conducted two unfair labor practice strikes in Sacramento, two in Los Angeles and now, two in Oakland.

Bargaining for the common good

This term is used to describe union demands for contract provisions that are geared to benefit a wider community than just teachers and school employees. These include restorative justice, ventilation, affordable housing and even climate change. The Oakland union sought contract language regarding housing vouchers and use of vacant district properties for housing students’ families, as well as union input on facilities upkeep.Ìę

Asking for such things allows the union to position itself as altruistic, seeking more than just better compensation for its members. It also increases the scope of its influence over district operations. Many of these items may, in fact, be beneficial.

But the union is the legal representative for teachers, not for anyone else. The public at large did not elect the Oakland Education Association to decide what was “good” to bargain for. Nor is the union accountable for the consequences that might arise from its demands. The school board is supposed to represent the public and choose between competing desires and needs within an available budget — which brings us to the most disturbing aspect of the Oakland strike and its settlement.

School board leverage

There has been over the past couple of years about the politicization of school boards. Special-interest groups’ clout in politics is a problem as old as the Republic, but the situation in Oakland went well beyond the usual arguments over who funded whose campaign.

“The school board, which currently has six members, has been split on the issue of OEA’s common-good demands,” . “Three members, Jennifer Brouhard, VanCedric Williams and Valarie Bachelor, have joined the union in urging the district’s bargaining team to discuss the common good demands with OEA, while other directors have said the demands should be left to the school board to discuss and implement, or left to OUSD to partner with other organizations on.”

It’s true that all three of the named board members received union campaign contributions, but that’s just a standard public policy issue. These three have unique relationships with teachers unions.

Bachelor is employed as a .

Brouhard is the and sat on its executive board at least through the 2021 school year.

Williams was in October, after serving as treasurer of United Educators San Francisco and a member of the National Education Association board of directors.

The union went on an unfair labor practice strike despite having three teacher union activists on the school board. It claimed to be bargaining for the common good even though the common people were woefully underrepresented in negotiations. Lakisha Young, founder of the parent advocacy group The Oakland REACH, that her organization “has organized and mobilized hundreds of district parents and none of us have been a part of the process.”

She added, “OEA is replaying tactics Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) parents and students just experienced: say on repeat that the district is bargaining in ‘bad faith,’ avoid fact-finding, mediation, impasse and then strike!”

“Our motivation for building outside of the system is because we saw our system crumbling in the midst of the pandemic,” said Lakisha Young, founder and CEO of The Oakland Reach in California, which in the early months of the pandemic launched a virtual hub for students who lacked internet access. Now, the nonprofit is training Black and Hispanic parents to work as math and literacy tutors —  “liberators,” they call them — to help students thrive in local schools. 

“Not only are we putting caring, committed people back into our communities,” Young said, “the system now has to re-engage with us in a different kind of power dynamic.” 

As they look to build a movement, however, leaders are grappling with some thorny questions. Are they contributing to school segregation? And to what extent do they want to remain connected to the very public schools their families left?

Young was among the leaders and researchers featured in a Monday webinar hosted by the Center on Reinventing Public Education, a think tank studying the future of pods after most students have returned to traditional schools. The center’s showed that Blacks were more than twice as likely as whites to report that their children were happier in pods — 52% to 25% — and also that they had more trust in the educators leading them than they did teachers in public schools. 

The majority of Black children still attend traditional public schools — 85%, according to . But CRPE researchers wanted to see whether Black pods and microschools connected to broader trends, such as the increase in Black , the and the growth in legislation supporting such models.

Are such policies “paving the way for an explosion in self-determined alternatives to public schools?” asked Jennifer Poon, a fellow with the nonprofit Center for Innovation in Education, which contributed to the research. “And if so, what would that mean for the families in Black pods and microschools? On the flip side, what would that mean for the majority of families who are still served by public schools?”

Introducing a topic often debated in the first year of the pandemic, moderator Chris Stewart, CEO of Brightbeam, a nonprofit that focuses on improving educational opportunities, pitched another question to the panelists: Do pods and microschools contribute to ? 

Speakers rejected the idea. Janelle Woods, founder of the Black Mothers Forum in Phoenix, said Black students are already segregated within public schools because they are suspended and expelled at higher rates than white students.  

Maxine McKinney de Royston, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, formed a small pod for middle school students in cooperation with the Madison school district. She said “it’s a particular form of gaslighting” to blame Black parents for resegregating schools, which she chalked up to  predominantly white, middle class communities from urban school districts.

What ‘schools aren’t delivering’

While homeschool families are used to patching together a variety of learning settings and programs for their children, that is becoming increasingly true of public school parents as well, according to recent research from Tyton Partners, a consulting firm. Its demonstrated growing interest in what researchers described as “multi-site schooling.”

Supplemental pods like those in Oakland are a part of that trend.

“In some cases, parents are looking actively and aggressively for something that schools aren’t delivering,” said Adam Newman, managing partner at Tyton. “It really increases opportunities and challenges for schools to be more creative [and to think] about how they can bridge some of these gaps, particularly around issues of equity.”

Historically, Black parents have always sought better opportunities for their children outside of mainstream schools, said Robert Harvey, former superintendent of a charter school network in East Harlem, New York, and now president of FoodCorps, a nonprofit that helps students access healthy food.

“The early pod school was the slave cabin,” he said.

And four years before the pandemic, Woods founded the Black Mothers Forum in Phoenix to support parents whose children were disproportionately disciplined in public schools.

“Our children were being criminalized and demonized for behavior that was normal for their age group,” she said. 

When schools shut down, the organization launched microschools to serve students whose parents had to work and couldn’t stay home to supervise remote learning. Parents who stayed with microschools are happier, she said, because their children aren’t being disciplined for minor infractions.

Economic options

Because they receive state education funds, the forum’s microschools are free for families. But Woods said foundations can help by supporting meal costs at microschools, which don’t qualify for the National School Lunch Program. It costs $6,000 to $7,000 per month to feed students, she said.

Pods and microschools serve as a “safe harbor” for some Black students, Stewart said. But in states where public funding isn’t available, many Black families can’t afford to form a pod or pay for a private microschool..

Harvey added that Congress opted not to increase the expanded child tax credit, which could have been an “economic option for 
 Black folks who live one check away from suffering and one check away from thriving.” 

Young said she wants to see more microschools, like those in Arizona.But The Oakland Reach “evolved and adapted” to offer enrichment and tutoring support rather than establish pods outside of the district.

“For better or for worse,” she said, “most of our families are going to be in these public school systems.”

The council will include representatives from 14 organizations that advocate for giving parents a voice in their children’s education — including families involved in charters, homeschooling and private schools.

In preparation for the 2022-23 school year, the council’s “listening sessions” are slated to explore what schools can do to help students recover from the pandemic, according to the department’s announcement. The meetings will emphasize finding “constructive ways to help families engage at the local level.” 

“Would I have liked to see it happen a year ago? Of course,” said Keri Rodrigues, president of the National Parents Union, one of the groups involved. She began advocating for such an initiative during the Trump administration, but added, “It’s the first time where we’re really getting 
 a group of folks representing parents and families at the table. It’s unprecedented.”

Other participating groups include the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, which supports families who have children with disabilities; Mocha Moms, a network of Black moms’ groups; and the National PTA.

In public comments, Cardona, the father of two teenagers, frequently notes that he’s a “parent first” and has made “roundtable” discussions with parents part of his visits to schools across the country. But his department has also faced criticism from parent leaders who say he’s been more vocal about the pandemic’s than on parents who had to endure months of remote learning and are still asking for tutoring to help their children catch up. Meanwhile, parents have gained new political power. Those who felt overlooked by unions and Democratic leaders who were slow to reopen schools helped tilt the 2021 Virginia governor’s race in favor of Republican Glenn Youngkin.

Rodrigues said she pushed for bringing the “boldest, baddest and most beautiful parent organizers in the game” to council gatherings. Ashara Baker, a Rochester, New York, charter school advocate, and Lakisha Young, CEO of The Oakland Reach — which opened remote learning hubs and trains parents to be literacy tutors — are expected to participate in the council’s first gathering in July. 

The next step, Rodrigues said, is for the department to formally define “parent and family engagement” so it can hold districts accountable. 

“Right now, family engagement can kind of mean whatever you want it to be,” she said. “It can be, ‘We showed you a PowerPoint. We sent you an email. We sent a flyer home in a backpack.’ That’s not good enough to get big-time federal money.” 

Bibb Hubbard, president of Learning Heroes, which helps parents understand their children’s academic progress, said the American Rescue Plan’s requirement that districts include parent perspectives in planning how to spend relief funds was a significant development.

“I have seen this team step up and sincerely make an effort to figure out how to be representative of all parents as they look at their policies and guidance,” she said, adding that Cardona has joined the organization’s parent town hall for the past two years. 

But she added that she hopes the department “gives the council some specific authority to shape policy” and includes parents “traditionally not listened to.” 

Megan Bacigalupi, executive director of CA Parent Power, said that should include parents in California, “where schools were closed the longest.” State-level committees, she said, haven’t been as inclusive. A on enrollment loss, announced in April, doesn’t include parent representatives. 

Like Rodrigues, Sonya Thomas, executive director of Nashville Propel, a local advocacy group — and part of the — told President Joe Biden while he was still campaigning not to ignore parent perspectives. 

“Do they have the real-life stories of parents who are from struggling communities?” she asked about the new council. “I want to see real partnership. It’s really taking our feedback and using it, and not being defensive with it.”

Now that effort has drawn the attention of one of the world’s wealthiest people, who happens to be giving her money away at a rapid clip. 

In March, just over five years after the group’s founding, MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, an unrestricted gift of $3 million. The donation is its biggest gift to date and nearly doubles the group’s revenue, according to recent .

The money, said founder Lakisha Young, will allow the group to “take our work to the next level” and plan for the long-term, which includes pushing to bring more parents and community members into schools in support roles.

The plan for the group is to map out a three-year growth strategy, expanding trainings that allow community members to become literacy tutors and work alongside teachers in the Oakland Unified School District.

“Our work needs to go where most of the students are,” Young said in an interview. 

California regulations restrict who can work as tutors, but she said the group is poised to lobby to tweak those regulations. 

Scott’s gift will also give the group a measure of stability as it pushes to bring in more funders. Having reliable funding, Young said, “allows the work to move just that much faster.” 

The donation was a surprise. Young said she got a call last October letting her know that an anonymous donor wanted to find out more about the organization. Then in March came the email with Scott’s announcement. Even now, Young hasn’t met or talked with Scott, who is known for in multi-billion-dollar flurries with little fanfare and posting notices to her , where she’s known simply as “Mom, writer, advocate.”

The $3 million donation represents a watershed moment for The Oakland REACH, which Young created in 2016, after an eye-opening experience trying to get her eldest daughter into a good public kindergarten. 

Many neighborhood schools at the time were in “school improvement” under No Child Left Behind, which meant they might well close within a few years. Young didn’t want that sort of disruption, so she placed her daughter’s name in a charter school lottery that offered just 11 slots. The lottery drew 93 applicants. 

Luckily, her daughter’s name popped up seventh, but Young said the victory “really sparked something in me” — a realization of how deeply unfair the system was to families of color. If thousands of families are forced to place their children’s futures in a hat and hope for the best, she recalled, “What do you think that kind of message is sending to them about what they have access to?”

Young created The Oakland REACH in December 2016 as a self-described network of “passionate and fearless parents” pushing to improve education in a city where more than 90 percent of students are non-white and nearly 60 percent receive free or reduced-price meals.

The group formed with 50 “unapologetic” parents across about 30 district and charter schools, “moms and grandmamas and daddies and uncles who were raised in Oakland, went to Oakland schools, were served poorly by those schools,” Young said in an interview last fall. As parents and grandparents, now they’re “basically saying, ‘This won’t be my child’s story. This won’t be my grandchild’s story.’”

She recalled how she chose her first members: “I don’t want the PTA parent. I want the parent that, when they come in, pencils move because they’re just coming in totally focused on, ‘What’s happening with my baby, what’s going on?’ They’re just solely focused on their kids.”

Since then, the group has pushed to shine a bright light on achievement in the city: Young last March that just 8.7 percent of Oakland eighth-graders scored proficient in math in fall 2021 — this in a city, according to the group’s December survey, where parents “showed a HUGE demand for math skills.” She noted that 81 percent of parents want “more high-dosage math tutoring. Parents want their kids to read and do math 
 well!”

‘Our families were already losing’

The group’s first big victory came in March 2019, when the city school board unanimously approved a policy change that gave families impacted by school closures and consolidations priority admission to schools they wanted their children to attend.

When COVID-19 hit exactly one year later, Young, with the help of the (CRPE), quickly built the digital Hub. 

Remembering back to the summer of 2020, Young said the group “didn’t have much to lose” by trying something new for online learning. “Our families were already losing. This was, actually, for us, an opportunity because kids were at home with their parents. It was an opportunity to do something really different and move from a ‘struggle’ model to a model of more privilege and abundance.”

In the program’s first five weeks, Young noted, assessments showed that 60 percent of K-2 students rose two or more levels on the district’s reading assessment and 30 percent rose three or more levels. 

“We did that,” she said triumphantly. “And we did that by bringing 
 teachers and a group of folks to the table that were doggedly focused on serving families. No politics, no adult politics, no drama. 
I’m telling you: If we were doing that all the time, our kids would be able to read. Our kids would be good at math.”

Families on their own

In addition to training literacy tutors, the Scott donation will also jumpstart a planned math fellowship this fall that will help caregivers become tutors.

Family members taking control of learning is key in a district awash in news of , and . One need the group hopes to help with: Oakland’s insatiable demand for substitute teachers. Young envisions training “community educators” who don’t simply show up to a new school each day, but who have “an investment in that community” and remain there through multiple assignments.

Nationwide, districts will also soon be figuring out what to do when federal COVID relief in 2024. 

Through it all, Young said, most parents must continue trusting their children to a public education system that’s full of uncertainty. 

“Superintendents leave,” she said. “Principals leave. Teachers leave. Families don’t leave. So they have to have what they need.”

In essence, families must create the solutions the district needs. “We can scream and holler as much as we want about what the system needs to do,” Young said, but “we need to be creating the talent.”

Christina Barnes, a mother of two who works as a family liaison for the organization, recalled helping a grandfather who was taking care of a child but didn’t know how to use email or send text messages. As a result, he missed alerts about school closures and other important information. “He would call and say, ‘I didn’t know school was closed today.’” 

Barnes helped arrange a tech fellowship for the grandfather that gave him the skills he needed to stay informed and to help his grandchild keep up with school.

Guadalupe Canchola, a mother of three young children and a so-called “parent liberator,” works with many Spanish-speaking families who feel unsafe speaking up, mostly because of language barriers or fears about their immigration status. “I love to bridge these gaps between families and the school system, just so they know that no matter their situation, they have rights. Their kids have rights.”

In one recent case, a parent asked Canchola to sit in on her child’s IEP meeting for special education services. But the parent handled it well.

“Honestly, the way I saw her advocate for herself and her son was the biggest surprise and takeaway for me,” she said. In so many cases like these, parents get intimidated “or cornered into a decision that’s not ours.” The more parents know about their rights, she said, the better. “They have to listen to you. They have to meet your needs. That’s just very powerful.” 

Bree Dusseault, a principal with CRPE, said Young’s work to elevate the voices of parents is “getting very clear results” in student achievement, with literacy rates climbing “at a pretty significant pace” for the kids they serve. “She has this very, very deep belief that parents need to be in the driver’s seat — and deserve to be in the driver’s seat — and need to be a part of the larger narrative of what their children are achieving.”

A lot of Young’s success and impact, Dusseault said, is the product of years of work in Oakland — much of that “well underway before the pandemic.”

Giving away money ‘quickly and without much hoopla’

Scott, 52, is one of the richest people in the world — as of May 16, the placed her at No. 35, just above Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman. Her net worth stands at $32.9 billion, though Scott has vowed to give away half the fortune in Amazon stock she got in a divorce settlement with Bezos. 

Since 2020, the one-time novelist has given away at least $8 billion, with a heavy emphasis on education, public health, climate change, gender and racial equality, food security, and LGBTQ rights 

In early 2021, she married Dan Jewett, a Seattle science teacher.

The New York Times that Scott hands out money “quickly and without much hoopla,” moving the focus away from herself and onto the beneficiary organizations, which have included historically Black colleges and universities, Habitat for Humanity chapters, community-based education foundations, and many others. Many of these organizations “fly beneath the radar of major foundations,” The Times noted.

Young said the donation will help strengthen families and move people’s focus away from the “the inputs of drama and the inputs of chaos” roiling the Oakland district. “It’s a lot, but the question is: What can we still be doing in this moment to make sure our kids can read and do math? And we believe it’s what we’ve created. Our kids do not miss a beat, regardless of the political hoopla. But how many other kids did miss a beat because of it?”

To mark 24 months since schools shut down because of COVID-19, ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ spoke with parents, educators, researchers and students across the U.S. We are running some of these interviews in their entirety to give complete accounts of where we’ve been and where some think we’re going.Ìę

On leave from her job at Kaiser Permanente and trying to adjust to remote school with her two children, Toni Rochelle Baker of Oakland, California, found a new calling in the early months of the pandemic. When parent advocacy group Oakland REACH asked her to become a parent liaison, she thought, “I know what I’m scared of and what I’m facing over here, so let me help wherever I can,” she told ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ.Ìę

In early March, philanthropist McKenzie Scott donated to Oakland REACH to expand its work on literacy and math tutoring programs. 

In a January interview, Baker spoke about her kindergartner’s disappointment with virtual kindergarten, losing her best friend to COVID-19 and the importance of cherishing “the little things.”

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ: Feb. 14 was 700 days since most schools began closing. That number even took us by surprise. What’s your initial reaction to it?

Toni Rochelle Baker: ​​Wow, this really happened. At first, I thought it’s going to be like two weeks. My thought was, “I’m kind of happy we get to stay home. The world gets to shut down. I need a little break.” What’s a break to a mother? We don’t get to have sick days.

What was the moment you realized everything changed? What were you doing before and after?

My kitchen, my dining room table had turned into a school. I had two kids at the table with computers doing virtual learning and I had no idea what that meant. They told us to sign on to some Zoom that I’ve never heard of before. All three of us were at the table because at that time I was working from home. I thought we’re all going to just sit at the table and do our work. Then I realized we’re sitting there and there are 25 other students on Zoom in kindergarten. It just got real. 

What decisions do you remember having to make in the first weeks after schools closed?

I was in shock. We were told we couldn’t leave our house. We shouldn’t be around family and friends. We should be isolated. I was happy at first because I needed the time to breathe, but on the flip side, I thought this doesn’t feel so friendly. I’m a people person. I’m used to being around people and being outside and enjoying nature. Now they’re telling us to be cautious. I thought, “Is the world coming to an end? Is this what it’s going to feel like?” It was scary and confusing.

They gave us curfews in our city and told us to stock up on food. I don’t live my life like that. I’m a single mother. I go grocery shopping when I can. We get what we need. I didn’t have a deep freezer. I didn’t have extra money just laying around to spend $300 on food. I didn’t have Wi-Fi at the time because I didn’t really need it. I have my phone and now I need Wi-Fi for three people.

What has been the darkest part of the pandemic for you?

My best friend, who is like my big sister, died from COVID. I talked to her three days before she went into the hospital, not even knowing that she was sick. She didn’t know she was sick. Then she goes into the hospital and passes away. I couldn’t go see her. I couldn’t go to the hospital.

Tell me about your children. How old are they?

Talia is 9, in the third grade, and Tatum is 6, and he’s in the first grade. [Before the pandemic], my daughter was already in elementary school and my son was in preschool. Every day, I would drop my daughter off at school and my son would be with me. There was a kindergarten class across the hall from her first grade class. My son, who wasn’t even going to that school,  would go get in the line with the kindergartners. y. He would fist bump the teacher. The teacher would say, “Give me a hug,” and he would literally go to her class every single morning, sit down at carpet time, snacktime and even do the worksheet activity. This is a true story. I didn’t know that God was setting it up for him. It got to the point where they put a picture of him on the wall. 

The following year when he was ready to go to kindergarten, I got a call from that teacher, and she said, “Oh my God. I got Tatum on my roster.” I was so excited because they already had a bond. But he never got to go to in-person kindergarten because the pandemic happened. He already had a relationship with the teacher before the world shut down, so he was able to maneuver through kindergarten. But I never imagined not being able to walk my son to kindergarten. Those are the most valuable years of life. 

What broke my heart was for him to say, “Mommy, I hate school. I hate kindergarten. I want to go back to preschool.” That hit me, and it hit me hard. He already had this perfect picture in his mind about kindergarten. It was like he was saying, “Wait, you didn’t tell me I was going to be on the computer.” He didn’t understand. I didn’t understand. It broke my heart because the other kids didn’t even have what he had — that relationship. 

Did you consider holding him out of kindergarten? A lot of parents did.

Absolutely not. My children are just like me — social butterflies. I’m in love with my kids, but my kids were on my last nerves during the pandemic. Those four walls just weren’t enough.

How did you get through the tough times? Who did you rely on?

I was just relying on God. I was getting ready to see his face. Outside of God, I had Oakland REACH. I had a support system. They gave us vouchers for food. They gave my kids free computers. They gave us Wi-Fi. They had these teachers — I don’t even know where they found these beautiful teachers with these loving hearts for these kids. There was a teacher who had a grandma’s touch and a mom’s heart, and she was just so warm. This is through a computer. I’ve never met this woman to this day in real life. I had the community of Oakland REACH behind me. I wouldn’t have made it without them.

I have been with them for a couple years. About two weeks before the pandemic, I was put on an administrative leave from work at Kaiser Permanente. They told me I was coming back, but then the world shut down. This parent-led group that’s like a family to me said, “We’ve got to put something in place for these families. Everybody is at home.” I said, “I’m willing to help. I know what I’m scared of and what I’m facing over here so let me help wherever I can.” When I first met this group, I told them if they ever had a position, to hire me because I love the work they do. I love the mission. I didn’t know the pandemic was going to open that door for me.

They created this hub and they needed family liaisons. I didn’t even know what that meant. I was teaching my kids, but I was bored as heck because I’m used to being a busybody. I started helping other families and other mothers, calling my friends and telling them about Oakland REACH.Ìę

Describe a moment when you felt you were getting conflicting guidance or instructions.

The school didn’t even know what to do. They didn’t have a lesson plan. They said to log on to Zoom for an hour. That was it. Then you do these worksheets. You are your child’s first teacher. I do believe that. I read to my children, but [the school] is telling me I’ve got to be a kindergarten teacher and a first grade teacher and do my work. It just didn’t add up to me. Then not being able to be with friends and family because we didn’t know if we were going to infect each other or if we were sick — it was just scary. It was just me and my children, and it was lonely. 

Your children changed schools last year. What led you to make that decision?

My son got to finish the end of kindergarten. I was hesitant on sending them back to school, but their mental state was so bad. They needed to go back, be with people and feel some type of routine. I didn’t know if I was making a good choice as a parent. I didn’t know if they were going to actually keep my baby safe. They were going to school in Oakland, but we live in Walnut Creek [about 16 miles away]. I’m working from home and I’m commuting to Oakland every day just so they can have some sanity. He got to graduate from kindergarten. It was a drive-through graduation. 

When this school year came around, COVID was just everywhere. The previous year, they did the COVID tests, they did the sanitizer, they did the masks, they did all these precautions. And when school started back the next semester, all of that went out the window. I let it slide the first two days of school, but by the third day, I’m like, “What’s going on? Where are the masks? We’re still in this stuff, and it’s worse now.” I had to make an executive decision as a parent. My kid’s class got exposed and I didn’t like the safety of it. I was worrying, like I had knots in my stomach. I had to remove my children from there. [My son’s] class went on quarantine for a week and then I just never took them back.

What do you feel hopeful about now?

I feel hopeful we can ascend through this. I wouldn’t say we know exactly what we’re dealing with, but we’re cautious now, we’re aware. My hope is to find some sense of normalcy. Maybe this is the new way of living, taking it day to day. Nothing is predictable. Hold onto the memories that we had in the good times because this is the new way of living. I don’t think this thing is going away any time soon.Ìę

You don’t feel like the pandemic is ending?

We’re still in it, and a lot of people are still not taking it seriously. A lot of people are not taking precautions. A lot of people just still don’t care. I’ve lost several people to death, but people don’t want to get vaccinated. People don’t want to wear masks. People don’t want to have social distancing. People aren’t washing their hands. I can’t even go to the grocery store and taste a grape. We’ve been doing that since we were kids, eating the grapes and strawberries at the grocery store. You can’t go to Costco and get the samples. It’s the little things. 

What would you tell yourself 700 days ago, if you could go back in time, given what we know now? 

Cherish your time because time is something we’ll never get back. Smiling with my friend, looking at her actual smile without a mask, the hugs we exchanged without feeling like we were going to kill one another, holding hands and walking through the park —  it’s the little things for me. The playdates, the sleepovers, eating out. 

You work with a lot of parents. What do you think the public hasn’t understood about parents during these past two years?

The world is in a pandemic, but the educational system for Black and brown children was in a pandemic way before that. It was already hard for us. Our kids are not getting everything that they need. Trying to navigate education and figure out the best solution for these babies, the leaders of the future, is difficult. We don’t have tutors, we don’t have money, we don’t have resources, we don’t have people we could call. It’s just us, figuring it out day to day and trying to keep our babies alive, healthy and safe.

That’s how long it’s been since more than half the nation’s schools crossed into the pandemic era.

On March 16, 2020, districts in 27 states, encompassing almost 80,000 schools, closed their doors for the first long educational lockdown. Within nine days, the nation’s remaining districts followed suit.

Since then, schools have reopened, closed and reopened again. The effects have been immediate — students lost parents; teachers mourned fallen colleagues — and hopelessly abstract, as educators weighed “pandemic learning loss,” the sometimes crude measure of COVID’s impact on students’ academic performance.

To mark what will soon stretch into a third spring of educational disruption, ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ spoke with educators, parents, students and researchers about what Marguerite Roza, director of Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab, called “a seismic interruption to education unlike anything we’ve ever seen.” They talked movingly, often unsparingly, about their missteps and occasional triumphs, their moments of despair and fragile optimism for the future. [You can scan through our expanding archive of testimonials right here.]

As spring approaches, there are additional reasons to be hopeful. More children are being vaccinated. Mask mandates are lifting. But even if the pandemic recedes and a “new normal” emerges, there are clear signs that the issues surfaced during this period will linger. COVID heightened inequities long baked into the American educational system. The social contract between parents and schools has frayed. Teachers are burning out.

“There are kind of two camps,” said Beth Lehr, an assistant principal of Sahuarita High School, south of Tucson, Arizona. “There’s the one camp of ‘This too shall pass,’ and then there’s the other camp of ‘Yeah, it’s going to pass, but I don’t know if I want to wait for it to.’”

But none of this was on anyone’s mind on March 16, 2020.

The World Health Organization had a pandemic only five days earlier. Two days after that, then-President Donald Trump called a . And in the Northshore School District, a system of 22,000 students northeast of Seattle, schools had already been closed for over a week. In late February, one of its schools shut for deep cleaning after an employee traveled out of the country with a family member who had become ill. The district’s closure offered a glimpse into what many thought would be a short-term disruption.

‘I realized it wasn’t science fiction’

Susan Enfield, superintendent of Highline Public Schools in Washington: A very good friend of mine who works in the called me, end of February, and said, “I think we’re going to close 
 and I think the rest of you won’t be far behind.” I said, “No way, there’s no way they’re going to close schools.” I mean, I really was incredulous.

Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education: I was having brunch with my sister in Kirkland, Washington, when the news broke that there were multiple cases and deaths at the Life Care Center nursing home just a few miles away. My husband sent me a text telling me to get out of Kirkland right away, and everything felt ominous.

Marguerite Roza, Seattle-based director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University: My daughter and I were driving to go pick up some fish for dinner. In the car, they announced the governor’s order — it was with a bigger lockdown kind of order — and we walked into the fish market place, and the guy behind the counter goes, “Have you heard anything yet?” We were like, “Yep.” And he goes, “What did he say?” We said, “Lockdown.” And he [grunts], “Uhhhh.” Already, the streets were pretty empty, and the first person we talked to was the guy packaging up our salmon.

Tony Sanders, superintendent, School District U-46, near Chicago: I was asked to serve on a statewide panel of superintendents 
 to provide guidance to school district leaders across the state. Our first meeting, held on Sunday, March 15, was attended by prominent legislators, state health officials, the deputy governor for education and state superintendent of schools. Hearing the projections of worst-case scenarios should we not “flatten the curve” was surreal. At the conclusion of that meeting, where we worked to socially distance, but had no idea yet about the need to wear a mask, I made the four-hour journey home in complete silence and disbelief.

Michael Mulgrew, president, United Federation of Teachers, New York City: We started tracking this during the Christmas holiday. We had some teachers who were in China. We had them quarantine when they came back. I didn’t realize [things had changed] until March 16, the day after the New York City public schools closed. I was in my car driving around the city and I was shocked that the streets were empty. That’s when I realized it wasn’t science fiction. 

Bridgette Adu-Wadier: freshman, Northwestern University, graduate of T.C. Williams High School in Alexandra, Virginia: By the end of March, Gov. Ralph Northam basically announced that all the schools would be closed due to the pandemic for the rest of the school year. I watched the livestream, and I was texting my friends. One of them was actually really upset and crying about it, just because it was such a stressful situation to be in — like, things are never going to be the same again.

‘We were completely unprepared’

Parents, superintendents and others — many in a state of shock — had little time to plan as events unfolded at frightening speed.

Toni Rochelle Baker: family liaison for Oakland REACH, a parent advocacy organization, Walnut Creek, California: They gave us curfews in our city and then they told us to stock up for food. I don’t live my life like that. I’m a single mother. I go grocery shopping when I can. We get what we need, and now you’re telling me to stock up on food? That was scary. I didn’t have a deep freezer. I didn’t have extra money just laying around [to] go spend $300 on food. I didn’t have Wi-Fi at the time because I didn’t really need it. I have my phone, and now I need Wi-Fi for three people.

Maria Amado, family child care provider, Hartford, Connecticut, who opened her program for school-age children during remote learning: [Translated from Spanish] Educators, including myself, sewed masks for the children, and we looked for resources to support each other. Some gave fabric to make the masks, others the elastic. It may not have been in big ways, but they all contributed. And now I remember this and think, “Where did I find the time to make the masks?” It was the adrenaline to survive, knowing this would protect me and I had to do it.

Tony Sanders: We needed to place emergency orders for Chromebooks and other devices. We had to completely transform our approach to food service so that by March 17 we were feeding our students and community at food pickup locations throughout the district. There were decisions that had to be made that I would never have thought of. We had to determine how we would ensure employees would continue to be paid. During the first days of the pandemic, I recall sitting alone in my office. The view from my window was a large parking lot with one vehicle.

Sherrice Dorsey-Smith, deputy director of programs, planning and grants, San Francisco Department of Children, Youth and Their Families: I had to figure out how we were going to open what we called emergency child and youth centers. These were spaces for essential workers to leave their children for the day while they were at work. Child care centers were closed, schools were closed, but some people needed or were required to continue working. They needed a safe place for their children during the day. I had to figure out how to get breakfast, lunch and snacks to all the sites. I remember working through the weekend nonstop, literally 48 hours.

Michael Mulgrew: It was a mad scramble to get everyone trained quickly how to get their classrooms up. How do we teach parents how to help their kids? It was non-stop. It was hundreds of decisions every day. Even though everything was closed, we were still moving stuff literally, like laptops and iPads and different things, trying to get them to our members’ houses so they had something to work off. [Former] Mayor [Bill de Blasio] had resolved never to close the schools, so he would not allow the Department of Ed to put any contingency plans in place. On the Friday before the schools closed, at 3 p.m., the mayor would be banging on the table saying he was going to keep the schools open. And that Sunday afternoon he closed the schools. So we were completely unprepared.

School, interrupted

As the deadline for lifting lockdown kept slipping away, some took longer to grasp the new reality: Life wouldn’t be returning to normal anytime soon.

Mariela Garcia: freshman at the University of Houston, graduate of Eastwood Academy High School in Houston: It was during spring break when we ended up having two weeks instead of one. And two weeks turned into three. This went on for a couple of weeks before we noticed that we weren’t going to go back to school. Stores started closing down, schools started closing, many things started closing because everyone was scared. That’s when I noticed that this was becoming very serious.

Dale Chu, senior visiting fellow at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute: I realized everything had changed 
 on May 10, 2020. How do I remember the date? My at-the-time 5-year-old daughter — after nearly two months on Zoom — drew a picture of her class for me. Seeing Kellan’s classmates through her eyes on a Zoom grid really hit things home for me.

Ricardo Miguel Martinez, president, Latino Parents for Public Schools, Atlanta: I had people worried about getting kicked out, evicted, lights being turned off, not having groceries. These are people who weren’t making excuses. The people who are fighting masks and stuff, they have a choice to either follow the data or not follow the data. God bless them in their fight. But these people didn’t have a choice. They got thrown into the chicken factories and died. They got thrown into manufacturing and died so that we could have chicken at the grocery store.

Mourning the lost

Some felt the pandemic’s effects up close: sick parents, dead teachers. This month, the number of deaths from COVID-19 in the U.S. , with an estimated 2,200 of them educators. Many of the effects have been harder to measure, but are certain to leave lasting damage. Recent four out of five secondary school principals experienced “frequent job-related stress” last year, and educator surveys show over students’ mental health, including anxiety and suicidal thoughts.

Susan Enfield: We lost two middle school students to suicide early in the pandemic. We lost staff members.

Michael Mulgrew: I had to read the names of our members who passed away. I had to make the phone calls to those families. We lost a lot of members, and I always think that if we could have closed earlier, how many more would we not have lost.

Shawnie Bennett, a COVID-19 investigator, Oakland, California: I lost my brother [from COVID] in May of 2020. He was only 32. As a family, when we would gather to try and go see him or just sit outside the hospital window. We were afraid to touch each other, so it was hard to comfort each other. [My son] came home [from college] for Christmas, and he saw me so weak and broken. He had always seen a very strong Black woman as a mother. I was gone, emotionally wrecked, mentally, physically, and it broke him down to the point that he did not want to return to school. He’s in Atlanta now, got an apartment and he’s just trying to figure life out. He was very close to my brother. That loss, on top of what he physically saw me go through, was detrimental for him.

David Brown, principal, Hillcrest Heights Elementary, Prince George’s County, Maryland: Family vacations, going out to eat, visiting family — I think all of those things disappearing created a milieu where it was tough to manage. And when you’re in charge of leading a large group of individuals, how do you help and support them? How do you keep your teachers upbeat? Because the mental health of every adult who receives a paycheck from our county impacts the mental health and the wellness of children who are just simply here to learn. I remember there was discussion that we’ll be able to eat and enjoy ourselves come the 4th of July, and then that didn’t happen. You’re holding out hope that it’s going away, but it’s not, and [you’re] trying to remain that positive, invigorating leader that the principal has to be.

Bridgette Adu-Wadier: Graduation was a really tough time. I don’t remember enjoying it, honestly. Just collectively, it was like a year or so of the pandemic, and then also, my family was impacted a lot financially, which was stressful. I was basically helping my two younger brothers through virtual school for the whole year. I had a lot more family responsibilities, and it took a toll on me mentally. I had trouble balancing things, especially with Zoom class sessions while my brothers needed help or were playing loudly in the other room. I relied on music and audiobooks as a form of escape.

Ashiley Lee, tech and operations coordinator, Para Los Niños, a Los Angeles charter school, where last year she taught seventh-grade history: I remember being in a class full of blank screens, because we no longer required cameras on, and then after that, putting my grades in for the semester and realizing just how low they were. I was trying to brainstorm with my team: What is something, anything, we can do to encourage our students to at least get the one assignment we post a week in by the end of the semester? My kids, it was so funny, we started a joke where I would call on a student to answer a question and they wouldn’t be there — kind of a ghost in the call. And the kids would comment in the chat, “Ghostbuster! Ms. Lee caught him.”

Marguerite Roza: The hardest part was when it looked like there was no reopening school. This was November of 2020. The governor had established these metrics by which you could open schools, and as far out as the modelers had modeled, it was never going to reopen. My then-high school daughter [a cross-country runner] was getting more and more discouraged. You could just see it was really not healthy for her, just to be home all alone every day. And you, as a parent, start to feel desperate. I used to listen to press conferences constantly. You could see that there wasn’t going to be any movement. I was very worried about her. The sports season had come and gone. School was online. I think that was probably the darkest time, which coincides in Seattle with it being really dark, [at] like 3:45. 

Mariela Garcia: Hundreds and thousands of people were dying because of COVID, and I was scared. I remember I had no interactions with the outside world for — I kid you not — at least three months straight. My family just did not want to leave our home. At the time, we had to adjust to online school. I had no Wi-Fi or laptop at the time, so it was hard to be in class and even submit assignments from my phone. It was definitely a very hard time, especially when family members started to get COVID.

Toni Baker: I had two kids at the table with computers doing virtual learning and I had no idea what that meant. They told us to sign on to some Zoom that I’ve never heard of before. I’m in love with my kids, but my kids were on my last nerves during the pandemic. Those four walls just weren’t enough.

Couch sitting, watching ‘Friends’

The monotony of being stuck at home sparked new coping strategies: Cooking, at-home workouts, walking the dog — and of course . Some took long couch breaks. Others became entrepreneurs. Mariela Garcia started baking and ran a business from a local farmer’s market.

Mariela Garcia: My family actually bought the DVD set of “Friends” and we just watched “Friends” over and over and over. We’ve already seen each episode at least 10 times. We just keep it playing throughout the whole day because we don’t have any Wi-Fi or anything at home. I would not have started my business if it wasn’t for being in quarantine. I had so much more free time. I hate being that person, but the first time I ever tried my empanadas, they came out great, and I have not changed anything. 

Susan Enfield: A group of female superintendents from around the country — we refer to ourselves as “sister supes” — had a standing Sunday afternoon Zoom where we would just check in and get together. In the early months, that proved to be incredibly helpful, just remembering that we weren’t alone. Going for walks with my husband and also, frankly, allowing myself to feel pain and to grieve. I think as leaders we do need to inspire hope and let people know it’s going to be OK and be strong, but we also have to balance that strength and courage with vulnerability. There were weekends where I didn’t get off the couch. I’ve been pretty honest about that in conversations with others. I said to someone once, “If one more person says, ‘You got this,’ I’m gonna smack ‘em.” A year and a half ago, I didn’t “got this,” and people were just lying. I’m sorry, they were just lying. I don’t think we do ourselves or our colleagues or anyone any service by faking it.

Beth Lehr, assistant principal, Sahuarita High School, Sahuarita, Arizona: I do not check my email at all on the weekends.

Toni Baker: I had a support system. They gave us vouchers for food. They gave my kids free computers. They gave us Wi-Fi. They had these teachers — I don’t even know where they found these beautiful teachers with these loving hearts for these kids. There was a teacher who had a grandma’s touch and a mom’s heart, and she was just so warm. This is through a computer. I’ve never met this woman to this day in real life. I had the community of Oakland REACH behind me. I wouldn’t have made it without them.

David Brown: When we were in person, I had “lunch bunches” where I would eat lunch with the kids. So I went back to eating lunch virtually with the kids, and I found that really gave me a lot of positive energy. You find that you are equally, if not more, excited to see them in this virtual world than they are to see you. So it’s the, “Hey, Mr. Brown.” It’s the big smile. It’s the camera coming on. It’s the home environment. It’s the parents waving in the background. I think all of that does a good amount to lift your spirits.

‘The system itself is not changing’

Confusing guidance and vitriolic debate left many parents feeling lost. They watched helplessly as their children disengaged from learning, but also worried that their kids would get sick if they returned to school. School leaders were caught in what felt like a non-stop, high-volume war of words with unions, parents and state officials. 

Pedro Martinez, CEO, Chicago Public Schools; former superintendent, San Antonio Independent School District: Texas did not prioritize teachers [for vaccines] in the first round, but they were pushing hard and threatening districts about keeping schools open. Meanwhile, the positivity rate, I remember in San Antonio, was over 21 percent. The death rate was five times higher in my district than it was in the more affluent parts of the county. I just remember the frustration. You want these things, but yet you’re not providing vaccines to my staff, who actually want to keep the schools open. 

Michael Mulgrew: The city doctors are telling us it’s going to be nothing but a cold and the schools could remain open. The kids are going to be fine. They’re not going to get it, and we’ll create herd immunity, and we’ll be safer faster than everybody else. Literally, that’s the conversation I was having with the mayor and his doctors. Our doctors are telling us the absolute opposite. They’re saying, “Listen, children might not be getting this at this point in time, but this is a serious virus and people are going to die.” The big conflict was that first one. 

Marguerite Roza: I’m a data person. I really study the numbers, and I didn’t understand how a lot of people were driven by fear and couldn’t recognize what I was seeing. [They’re saying], “Your child could die,” and I was like, “Well, not really. The numbers here say, really, your child isn’t going to die. I promise you, driving to Grandma’s is more dangerous for your kid than this thing.” You’re having two different conversations if you’re talking about numbers and you’re talking about fear. The fear was so dominant that the numbers people probably felt, out of respect, we should step back and be quiet. I don’t want to tell somebody who’s having a panic attack, “You’re overreacting.” Looking back on it, I think that I probably kept my real views about the data quieter than I should have. I thought people were going to bounce out of it.

Mariela Garcia: We were able to pick whether to go back in person or stay online. I definitely wanted to go back. I missed my friends. I missed having class with a teacher right in front of me. My parents thought it was not a good idea. I was conflicted in making a decision, but for the good of my family, I decided to stay online for my whole senior year. That also meant no sports. I was so heartbroken because sports meant everything to me. I was unable to play my senior year. I had already claimed the captain position in my previous year playing, and I was looking forward to a great season. 

Parent power

The pandemic has dramatically changed parents’ relationships with their public schools, prompting some to seek new options and others to demand more from the schools their children attend. “I think the pandemic has created some sort of awakening in parents that we’ve not seen before,” Roza said. “I don’t think there’s any putting that genie back in the bottle.” 

Wendy Neal, executive director of My Child My Voice, a Houston-based advocacy group: I’m not saying the teachers are bad, I’m just saying that the parents were finding creative ways of being more of a teacher to their own child. Some parents were like, “Well, if you’re not going to help my child, I’m pulling my kid out of your school. Either I’m going to homeschool, go to an education pod or go to a private school.” Some of these parents really didn’t believe in charter schools either, and then all of a sudden, they’re putting their kid in a virtual charter school.

Marguerite Roza: In March of 2021, [my daughter’s school] finally got around to having their cross-country season outside, and they banned all parents from coming. They run three miles. They’re outside. It just got to the point where it was eye roll upon eye roll. A lot of parents showed up anyway, ’cause how are you going to keep parents off of a three-mile course, right? And we’re popping out of the bushes waving at each other. [It had been] a year, and we knew better. I should have marched out and said, “The evidence suggests we’re fine here,” but they were going to ban you and ban your team if you weren’t cooperating.

Sonya Thomas, executive director, Nashville PROPEL, a parent advocacy group: You would think that a pandemic would bring about a sense of urgency. We’re talking about decades of educational inequities, and what I’m seeing is that the system itself is not changing. It has actually grown richer in money. It has grown more savvy in messaging. And it’s hurtful. I’ve got tears coming down my face now. I just had a friend who died this weekend. He couldn’t read. And I have to ask myself, “What has changed?” 

Toni Baker: When this school year came around, the COVID was just everywhere. The previous year, they did the COVID tests, they did the sanitizer, they did the masks, they did all these precautions. And when school started back the next semester, all of that went out the window. I let it slide the first two days of school, but by the third day, I’m like, “What’s going on? Where are the masks? Where is this? Where is that? We’re still in this stuff, and it’s worse now.” I had to make an executive decision as a parent. My kid’s class got exposed and I didn’t like the safety of it. I was worrying, like I had knots in my stomach. I had to remove my children from there. [My son’s] class went on quarantine for a week and then I just never took them back.

Beth Lehr: I have one teacher. This is her ninth year. She has already resigned for next year. She said, “I can’t do this anymore. I dread coming to work every day.” She goes, “You know, I love the day-to-day of being in front of our kids. The second I have to open my email or grade their assignments is when I realize why I resigned.” The emails. The constant onslaught of the very vocal unhappy parents. We have some amazing families, but we don’t hear the “Thank yous” as often as we hear the “You sucks.”

Lost learning

Educators love jargon. It’s not surprising, then, that lockdown introduced new terms like “COVID slide” and “pandemic learning loss” to describe the academic fallout students experienced from months of remote learning. In June 2020, researchers at nonprofit assessment group NWEA were among the first to predict the extent of the chaos. The return to in-person learning helped. But as recently as December, from McKinsey & Co. showed that academic recovery has been uneven and gaps between Black and white students have widened. Educators also report challenges with student behavior, which many to the lack of socialization during remote learning.

Beth Lehr: The learning loss is going to be there. There’s going to be a new norm, but trying to jam more and more and more down their throats is not helping. Continuing to create these high-stakes environments and making kids feel less than because of something that was totally out of their control is not helping. Meeting kids where they are is. Why do they have to learn all these things, right? They have to learn it to be successful in the future. Great, what does that success look like? How are we redefining success, because honestly, right now, for some of these kids, success is getting out of bed and showing up.

Mariela Garcia: I’ve always struggled in math, and since it was online I feel like I wasn’t really learning as much as I could. When I got to college, I took trigonometry, and it was difficult. I had to get a tutor or stay after school. I had to study more on my own time. I had to take a test in person for the first time in two years. I struggled the first couple weeks, but once I got help and once I started studying, it’s just like riding a bike.

Ricardo Martinez: Seems like we’ve already stopped talking about it. A lot of people refuse to acknowledge it. They’re trying to change the conversation to CRT [critical race theory], anti-CRT. Let’s not worry about what’s not really happening and worry about what’s actually happening. Kids are getting more aggressive. They’ve lost social skills. We’ve lost a lot of learning, and I don’t think that the parents have been able to help because we barely know how to do what they’re asking us to do. I hope that we’re talking about learning loss until we catch back up, which should be in a few years.

Beth Lehr: [Students are experiencing an] emotional stuntedness, for lack of a better term. Freshmen are notoriously immature, but what we’re used to seeing as freshman behavior isn’t even freshman behavior. The “devious licks” stuff [a TikTok challenge that included school property damage] — that was 100 percent only freshman. Oh my God, the soap dispensers were destroyed over and over and over again. We had to replace sinks. We had to replace toilets — not because they were stolen, but because they were destroyed. The older students were super-annoyed by the freshman because then we ended up having to lock our bathrooms during lunch. We’ve also had an increase in sexual infractions — not necessarily assaults. It’s consensual, but it’s much more frequent on our campus this year. This is my seventh year as assistant principal, and this year, hands down, we have had more issues with kids getting caught in positions that high schoolers should not be in.

Hosea Born, art and robotics teacher at Hope Academy of Public Service, Hope, Arkansas: We will be talking about it as long as there is the overwhelming reliance on standardized testing. The pandemic has shown us that adaptability is key, yet we are still measuring our students on how well they can take a test. Teaching a non-tested subject has allowed me to see the flexibility and amazing ways that students learn when there isn’t a looming requirement hanging over their heads. Some of my students haven’t had an art class since the start of the pandemic, but it is key for students to be able to create, and when given the opportunity, they have jumped right back in, and to me, are exceeding all expectations. 

Pedro Martinez: Last year, our district had 100,000 students who were disengaged, including seniors who would have dropped out. We got the majority of seniors to graduate. Same thing happened in San Antonio. What I heard from teachers directly was, “These kids are coming every day. These are the same students who we couldn’t get to engage in remote. They’re coming every single day.” I saw the first-quarter grades. There are still gaps, but significant improvements over the remote year, and specifically with our kids of poverty and kids of color. That gives me a lot of hope. When we have the children in our schools, they actually do perform better.

Robin Lake: I think we will grapple with [learning loss] for as long as the COVID generation is alive. We’ll be looking at the immediate impacts for probably a decade, but there are sure to be lasting effects on individuals and on the economy for many decades unless we can change the trajectory of our response. The question is how we’ll be talking about it. Will the story be that we failed this generation of children, or will it be that we pulled together and found solutions for this generation, and designed a better education system for future generations?

A ‘five-alarm crisis’ for teachers

As they looked back, some recalled moments of doubt about perservering. According to from the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union, more than half of teachers intend to leave the profession sooner than they originally planned. While some are dubious about “the Big Quit,” NEA President Becky Pringle called teacher burnout and staff shortages a “five-alarm crisis.”

Michael Mulgrew: I think most people in this profession thought of quitting throughout this thing. There were some really really tough times. The only way out of this is to go through it.

Susan Enfield: I don’t think I ever thought of quitting. There were moments where I thought I don’t know if I can do this, but that’s different than quitting. I never just was like, “I’m out of here,” and my was not a response to the pandemic. I’m ready for a fresh challenge and Highline is ready for a fresh leader.

Beth Lehr: I’m so torn. I’ve applied for a principal position within the district, but at the same time I’m like, “Why? Why did I just do that? What am I thinking?” I haven’t yet gotten to the point where the stuff that I dislike about my job has outweighed the stuff that I like about it, but it’s hit or miss on a daily basis. 

‘I don’t use the term normal anymore’

Like a sequel to a bad horror movie, the Omicron variant arrived just as educators and families thought they’d made it through the worst of the crisis. The sparked a spike in cases, resulting in further school closures and quarantines. But now, with increasing vaccination rates and a recent decline in positive cases, some states are lifting mask mandates. The nation’s three largest districts aren’t ready to let masks go, but some are starting to use a word they haven’t uttered in a while: hope.

Pedro Martinez: We’re now at a point where cases have been very steadily declining. Our city is now close to an over-70 percent vaccination rate. There are still gaps within my district, but I’m seeing good momentum, especially with 5- to 11-year-olds. We’re close to maybe half of our district that should be fully vaccinated within the next couple weeks. Over 90 percent of my staff are fully vaccinated. So it really gives me hope that we’re on the other side of this. There’s a chance that by springtime we could be talking about not wearing masks.

Susan Enfield: I am hopeful that in the coming weeks and months we are going to collectively adapt to a way of living, a way of working, that will feel more familiar to what we knew prior to the pandemic. I don’t use the term “normal” anymore. I think entering that phase gives me hope.

Michael Mulgrew: The buildings built after the last pandemic have these really big windows. They actually were built that way so that you could open them to keep ventilation in case there was another pandemic. That literally became part of the code for schools after the pandemic of 1918. For a period of time last year, the teachers kept opening up the windows the whole way, and it’s like 7 degrees out. So, we had to produce this video for all the teachers about how you only have to open like half the windows about 3 inches each and you’ll be fine. One of the first cold days when we got back last month, I was in a school, and one of the teachers had windows open all the way. And I’m looking at the windows, and she touched my arm and she goes, “I know I don’t have to open it that much, but my team teacher for 20 years died of COVID a year ago.” I said, “You keep that window open any way you want.”

Shawnie Bennett: I don’t think I will ever take off my mask.

Mariela Garcia: I’ve always been the type of person to talk to anybody, but it was different seeing people that I’ve never met before [at the University of Houston]. People have been socially awkward, and it’s hard to start a conversation. With my personality, I’m a happy person and I talk to anyone. So I’m going up to someone [last fall] like, “Hi, nice to meet you,” and they’re just like, “Whoa, 6 feet apart.”

Beth Lehr: It’s so hard to see the end, and it’s so overwhelming. What I’ve heard more this year from my teachers than anything is, “We thought that last year was hard. This year is 10 times harder.” We’ve had very, very low turnover. I do not foresee that being the case next year. There are kind of two camps. There’s the one camp of “This too shall pass,” and then there’s the other camp of “Yeah, it’s going to pass, but I don’t know if I want to wait for it to.”

‘A true hunger for doing things differently’

Two years of scrambling and false starts has offered ample opportunity to think about what has — and perhaps more to the point, what hasn’t — worked for schools. If there’s another pandemic — and scientists say there undoubtedly , and soon — will anything change?

Christopher Nellum, executive director, Education Trust West: I think we now appreciate mental health in a different way. The past two years have been traumatic. We have been scared, sick, overworked, unemployed. We have missed vital human connection and even lost loved ones. We have witnessed a surge in racially motivated hate crimes and a national reckoning over police brutality toward Black and brown Americans. It’s OK to be struggling to feel OK in the face of all of that. It’s OK to talk about it. And we all deserve access to the resources we need to address it. 

Sonya Thomas: Parent engagement is not what we want. When you engage us, what you’re doing is bringing your own agenda and you’re saying, “This is what we’re going to do, so get with the program.” That’s what engagement means, right? “I’m bringing something to you, this is what you’re gonna get and you gotta just walk in line with it.” I think what they’re learning is that we’re not going anywhere and we want parent partnership. We don’t want to be engaged. Throw that in the trash. That has never gotten anything for our children. What we want is true partnership. We want school districts to partner with us, intentionally take our feedback and use it. That builds trust. It’s not a talking point or a PR move. 

Dale Chu: If anything, we’ve learned what doesn’t work. For example, asynchronous learning [without live teaching ] — homework, study hall — stunk. We also learned that huge doses of it left millions of students isolated from their peers, the toll from which we’re just starting to come to grips with.

Robin Lake: I hear a true hunger for doing things differently. People are saying, “You know, the way we ask teachers to teach alone in a classroom, trying to be expert in all things and serve vastly different needs, is crazy.” I believe there is a powerful confluence of parents, educators and civic leaders who know things have to change and are determined to make that happen.

Michael Mulgrew: We never said [remote learning] was going to be the be-all-and-end-all. It was always a way for us to keep in contact, to keep our students engaged. Through the end of that [2019-20] school year, it really was more of a lifeline between teachers and students and their families. We thought it should have been more of a centralized process, but [the department] figured it’s better off to just let every teacher do their own thing. The majority of students really do regress in a remote setting. There was a small percentage of students who actually thrived in remote, so that says there’s something there we have to look at. If there’s a subset of children who were not doing well when they were going to school — and there’s all sorts of different reasons for that — who all of a sudden did really well in a remote setting, we have to look at this going into the future.

Marguerite Roza: We have seen districts jump in and be nimble in a way that we never thought districts could be nimble before. People always say, “You know, turning a district around is like turning an aircraft carrier.” I’m like, an aircraft carrier turns around in a day. Why is everybody using that as something that’s slow? I was in the military. [From 1988 to 1992, Roza served at the Navy Nuclear Power School in Orlando.] Aircraft carriers are pretty maneuverable. There are thousands and thousands of people on an aircraft carrier, and that thing could spin around and change direction with the wind. I do think that we had thought districts couldn’t adjust, and many of them did.

Beth Lehr: I’ve had a lot of teachers really rethink their philosophies — some of my most dyed-in-the-wool [teachers]. This has truly opened their eyes when they’ve seen the disparities. Not everybody’s home looks the same. When we first started doing all of the remote, we had a lot of really serious conversations about requiring cameras to be on or not. A lot of our teachers were like, well, “Why wouldn’t the camera be on?” They never took into account that there might be 10 people in a two-bedroom house. There might be somebody being slapped, hit, cut, whatever while they’re there. They might be embarrassed because they’re doing your class from their car in the McDonald’s parking lot.

‘So long and so short’

Seven hundred days have flown by for some and painfully dragged on for others. For many, it’s been a bit of both. 

Michael Mulgrew: It feels like 7,000 days.

Laurie Corizzo, counselor, Ridge Ranch School, Paramus, New Jersey: This whole pandemic, the virus, the water cooler conversations are never-ending. If someone isn’t discussing a vaccine, a booster, the virus, who has it, who had it, who passed, it seems that conversations are stagnant. My point is, it encompasses every single aspect of our lives. It is as if there were some sort of imaginary force field that prevents any semblance of any other conversation to happen anywhere on the planet. In a word, it is quite exhausting.

Christopher Nellum: I hope that 700 days in, we are seeing our education systems for what they are and what they have been for a long, long time: profoundly inequitable.

Susan Enfield: I didn’t know that 700 days could both seem so long and so short simultaneously. I think the last couple of years have felt like a lifetime in and of themselves, and yet, at the same time, it feels like it’s gone by in a flash.

Marguerite Roza: I mean, wow — what a seismic interruption to education unlike anything we’ve ever seen. Normally, we would say a 1 percent change in enrollment from one year to the next is earth-shattering to finance. We’re seeing 3, 4, 5, 6, 10 percent enrollment shifts in some districts. And some of those are large districts. Those kinds of things are going to change the structure of education forever.

Lead Image: Rippowam Middle School principal Matthew Laskowski looks on from a socially distanced cafeteria in September 2020 in Stamford, Connecticut. (John Moore / Getty Images)