On November 14, 2022, founders of Black-led pods and microschools and scholars who study Black self-determination in education gathered for a virtual event, sponsored by CRPE, an organization committed to reinvent public education in this country. The lively conversation between panelists Robert Harvey, Maxine McKinney de Royston, Janelle Wood, and Lakisha Young and moderator Chris “Citizen” Stewart explored why Black families for education solutions outside the public system, especially during the pandemic.
Harvey is an educator and community-leader pursuing a vision of justice, equity, and love. He is the President of FoodCorps, a national organization committed to ensuring that all our nation’s children have access to nourishing food.
McKinney de Royston is an Associate Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin.
Wood is the Founder/President of the Black Mothers Forum, Inc., founded in August 2016, a non-profit organization of black mothers who have come together to end the bloodshed in the Black community; dismantle the school to prison pipeline; and restore the strength, dignity and hope of the Black community.
Young is Founder and CEO of The Oakland REACH, a parent-run organization founded in 2016 with the mission to “make the powerless parent powerful.”
Stewart is an award-winning education activist, student of educology, writer, speaker, and life-long activist focused on child justice and personalized learning.
Their commentary responding to essential questions is telling. Here are excerpts from the conversation:
What is important to know about the Black families who form pod-like environments for their children?
Janelle Wood: “…what made us strike out and do the microschool is because of what we saw pre-pandemic as far as how our children were being criminalized and demonized for behavior that was normal for their age group. But yet, and still our children were expected to behave more mature than the others. We found that in our advocacy work, we found this level of disrespect and this level of exclusion of Black parents coming to the table saying ‘Hey, we want this change.’ And yet, although we were at the table, they still weren’t doing what we needed them to do.”
“I celebrate folks who…are also trying to reimagine how do we build systems, how do we build school context, how do we build the conditions of well-being and the conditions of identity, that allow Black students in particular to see, hear, and feel themselves in ways that are indigenously authentic, that are indigenously core to their formation. And so I would be remiss if we don’t put it in the lineage of the cottage school, the slave cabin, the freedom school, the micro movement of the 1960’s, that the Black Panthers created pod schools, namely in Oakland and in Chicago and in East Harlem.”
“This is a part of a tradition that Black folks have known well, but it has been often overpowered and over discussed by the white conservative pod movement.”
Why innovate outside the public education system?
Lakisha Young: “Our motivation for building outside of the system is because we saw our system crumbling in the midst of the pandemic. We saw our system actually not responding to our families and our communities when stuff shut down. And we had already set up a mechanism from the moment that school shut down, we already had a way to get to families to at least understand the conditions that they were dealing with.”
Will these innovations last after the pandemic?
Maxine McKinney de Royston: “…the pandemic just exacerbated the issues that were already present, the dissatisfaction that Black parents already had for schools and it really just forced their hands to make a choice, because they had already… If we look at the data around Black parents, they are shifting schools right and left between private schools, public schools, charter schools, independent schools, homeschooling. Just drastically searching for a place where their children can be well and where the children can learn. …And so they found and created options for themselves, because nobody was looking out for them, nobody was looking out for the Black families and we were not looking out for Black children. Nobody was supporting Black parents except for folks like Oakland REACH, where we in the Black community created our own context. And this comes from a long history of Black parents having to search out for educational options for our children. And I think it’s really important to say, because there’s a narrative right now around Black parents not valuing education.”
What about the claim that pods increase racial segregation?
Maxine McKinney de Royston: “…we sought to be a part of the public education system, force the public education system to basically recognize us. They didn’t. Vanessa Siddle Walker’s beautiful work talks about how we move from segregation to a second class desegregation, but never move to actual integration. But that was Black parents at the fore of those movements. So now when people have these questions around are we resegregating ourselves? You have to look at this not just historically, but you also have to look at it socio-politically. We have redlining happening, we have gentrification happening, which is re-segregating our schools against orders to desegregate schools that have happened now for decades. We had the most integrated, though they were really desegregated schools in the 90’s, beginning in the 80’s and 90’s and into the early 2000’s. And then cities and a bunch of other players started pushing to resegregate schools.”
Robert Harvey: “The greatest cause of segregation right now in the United States are white communities seceding from their public school district, making these micro districts where they have one elementary schools, one combined middle and high school. And because of how the way the lines are drawn around housing, now we have a district of all white folks. That’s the greatest leader of segregation right now. It is not pod schools and it is not homeschooling. It is not microschools.”
We can still have public schooling without the current public school system.
The new system of public schooling probably involves everything that has been invented in the service of kids so far and more. It includes homeschooling, learning pods, microschools, charter schools, independent schools, private schools, and learning organizations yet to be invented.
The time of one public education system thinking it should hold a monopoly over learner choice and force their enrollment by passing enacting state laws is ending.
A new order is coming.
Til tomorrow. SVB
A Better Path to Learning 
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