This is in conversation from Apple News. I'm Shemeita Basso. Today, how the U.S.

politicized pandemic school closures and failed to put children first.

In the spring of 2020, when the pandemic first hit and schools around the country closed,

four-year-old Serena had nowhere to go.

Her kindergarten was now online, and her mom, a single parent, couldn't stay

home to supervise her learning. So she brought Serena with her to work, cleaning

hotel rooms.

Serena was commuting with her mother an hour each way by bus

to the hotel, and her experience of kindergarten

was on her mother's smartphone while her mother was cleaning the rooms.

That's Anya Kamenitz. She's a journalist who's been covering education for two decades.

As her mother explained to me with a lot of kind of self-recrimination,

she couldn't get her onto the math lesson because a math lesson was when

her mother had to strip the beds and get the laundry

down to the laundry room and so she wasn't there to make sure that she

paid attention.

Serena's teacher was also struggling to keep the kids engaged.

She poured her heart and soul into trying

to translate the kindergarten experience online.

And what that ended up being like

was like a small Mr. Rogers production out of her home like singing she's got props

but it wasn't working it just didn't work. This is the story of the unworkable

...