It all came to a head in the summer of 2030 when the Supreme Court ruled on Blue vs. Board of Education. COVID had been raging for a decade. Wave after wave of COVID variants had pushed everyone except for front-line workers indoors. With infections soaring and immunity a distant dream, schools had gone completely online. As Gen COVID grew up, it was the students that suffered most. The social isolation from teachers and other students had a severe impact on their social and academic progress. Kids routinely acted out and threw tantrums and the number of students with mental health problems increased twentyfold.

With Zoom fatigue weighing on their minds, stressed-out parents pressured school districts across the country to adopt Facebook’s Metaverse. Metaverse is an immersive virtual reality platform. Kids everywhere loved it. You could choose your own avatar, dress it up, attend classes from the best teachers anywhere in the world, and hang out with friends from anywhere with great after-school activities. Kids everywhere started to spend long hours on the platform for their physical, social, and academic engagement, giving parents a welcome break. 

Soon, however, the cracks began to appear. All kids got a Blue Bunny avatar for free. Anything else cost a lot of money. Avatars with other colors or shapes cost anywhere from a few thousand to even millions of dollars. Often, classes were held in an open-sky blue classroom. The avatars of the poor students almost merged into the background, making them virtually invisible. The best teachers could now reach a much larger set of students and started to charge tuition similar to university classes. Even the simplest of after-school fun like a game of pick-up basketball cost extra. The Metaverse had become a very unequal platform with very different experiences for the rich and poor. Math and English literacy declined by 10 percent while the average family income for students admitted to four-year university went up 7 percent. 

Finally, one of the Blue Bunnies couldn’t take it any longer and sued the Kansas Board of Education. Lawyers for the Blue Bunny argued that education in the Metaverse was broken and that school districts were obligated to provide equal education for all. After two years of court battles, the Supreme Court finally ruled in the “Blue  vs. Board of Education” case. With a beautiful virtual Supreme Court background and judge avatars dressed in beautiful robes delivered their verdict. They ruled in a 9-0 verdict that parents had a right to use their money for the best for their kids and schools were not obligated to give the same education for everyone. 

With the verdict in hand, Facebook increased fees, making classes and activities 20 percent more expensive. The blue colors of the bunnies seemed to get even closer to the blue sky background of the classes. Separate but equal education had returned to America after 70 years and with their blue color merging into the background, 60 percent of students had become invisible learners.