COVID-19 Revealed New Roles for Cities to Create a Continuum of Support for Youth and Families. They Shouldn't End with the Pandemic
From the brief: "During the pandemic city leaders have had to address unprecedented challenges—from housing insecurity to public health—to support city residents. Some have taken a more holistic and creative approach to addressing their residents’ needs during the pandemic. For some local governments, this includes an offering that would have been thought impossible in the past: providing school-day programming directly to children and families through learning pods. As part of CRPE’s ongoing exploration of learning pods, we wanted to understand cities’ involvement in this new model of learning. We searched city websites to identify learning pods either operated, supported, or promoted by city agencies in the 100 largest cities in the U.S., and analyzed themes across the examples we found. We found about one-third of the largest U.S. cities created or supported learning pods, and most that did focused on addressing critical needs for child care and remote learning support. But a few cities went further, seeding new collaborations with trusted community organizations, offering a coordinated web of services, and expanding the portfolio of learning opportunities available to students. Their actions suggest cities are uniquely positioned to support K–12 recovery by building a stronger, more connected, and resilient education ecosystem."