Learning Pods: How We Responded, What We Learned and What’s Next

In this session, five communities discussed lessons learned and implications from their experience in starting and supporting learning pods during the pandemic:

Joi Chester, Ed.D., of Greater Washington Community Foundation, Maryland, talked about Montgomery County’s Educational Equity and Enrichment Hubs, explaining how the hubs were funded, how partners worked to ensure that parents would know where they could get resources to support their children and what it took to quickly open 40 sites with 12 providers.

Barbara Hubbell of United Way of the Southern Tier, New York, gave a perspective from a more rural viewpoint. She talked about issues the community needed to address, such as connectivity and transportation and discussed the ways the community came together — including repurposing staff and space — to make sure that children who needed support during the day would be able to attend a distance learning program.

Ken Livingston of Get Delaware Reading at United Way of Delaware, Cierra Hall-Hipkins of Network Connect Inc. and Karen Mann of First State Community Action Agency painted the picture of how learning pods in Delaware were funded, how they were operated ― including big picture and on-the-ground perspectives ― and what results they achieved.

Maria Juarez-Stouffer of Children’s Services Council of Broward County, Florida, talked about shifts required to ensure that community organizations had what they needed to provide virtual services to support families. This included supporting child-service agencies, looking at program redesign and changing their reimbursement methodology as well as making changes again when schools returned to mostly in-person learning.

Tammy Malich, Ed.D., of City of Las Vegas Department of Youth Development and Social Innovation shared how they supported students of essential and critical workers immediately after the shutdown and then created Vegas Strong Academies for the 2020–2021 school year. Vegas Strong Academies provided full-day care, screenings, additional programming and full-day distance learning support. She also talked about ways they supported students emotionally.

Panelists discussed how their experiences with learning pods have led them to consider ways they can continue to quickly adapt to students’ needs as schools reopen. Communities talked about plans to open charter schools to provide education in smaller school environments, how they realized that being innovative was not as difficult as they thought and ways groups that worked together have committed to continuing to work closely together after the pandemic, among other strategies.