Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many kids and their parents struggled through months of virtual learning and home schooling together, and now, the academic year is coming to an end. As summer break starts and the pandemic lingers on, a lot of parents are excited by the prospect of kids heading back to school in the fall. But a recent survey shows more parents than you think are saying “not so fast” to reopening classrooms.
A Real Clear survey by the American Federation for Children, a nonprofit that seeks to empower families, especially lower-income families, finds that 40% of parents say they’re more likely to home-school or virtual school after lockdown ends. All over the nation, there’s growing interest in home school and distance learning opportunities, and many parents aren’t waiting until school districts announce decisions about the 2020-2021 school year to make their choice. In Texas, the El Paso Homeschool Association says they’ve seen a spike in inquiries from parents. Similar trends are being reported in Michigan and in California.
For parents, choosing whether or not to allow kids to return to school in the fall is complex. Many are worried about the very real threat of contracting COVID-19. Nikki Barnes, a mom of three from Winter Park, Florida, tells Care.com she has a “high-risk, vulnerable household,” and she’s not OK with the idea of rushing her 11-, 13- and 17-year-old kids back into the classroom while COVID-19 is still a threat.
“My mother lives with us. She is 70 and has a compromised immune system and often gets pneumonia every year, even before all this happened,” says Barnes. “My husband and my oldest son have a history of respiratory issues, and I have a family history of cardiovascular issues. We are basically a one-income family … so if one of us were hospitalized or very sick, it really would take a major toll on the family for however long that would last, possibly weeks or months.”
Barnes isn’t sending her kids back and hopes their schools will continue to offer virtual learning opportunities in the fall for families who are hesitant. But she feels like an outlier among the other parents in her community who seem excited to send their kids into the classroom. “I just don’t have any confidence in our cities or school systems that they could be well-sanitized, especially for teenagers, so every day our household would be at new risk,” she adds.
In addition to the health risks of attending school, parents are also weighing the reality of what school might look like in the fall and the potential impact of the new strict classroom guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Lizzie Goodman, a mom of two from Chicago, Illinois, says she’s hesitant to send her first grader into what seems like a totally upended class structure. “My 6-year-old is registered for first grade at a new school, but I feel like there’s only a 50% chance she’ll actually go,” Goodman says. “I feel very uneasy about: 1: sending her into a public space with close contact with other kids, and 2: if it’s another round of distance learning, having her start school at home with teachers she doesn’t know. This is compounded by the fact that she’ll be going from a Montessori classroom to a traditional one.”
Previously, Goodman’s 6-year-old was enrolled in a Montessori kindergarten, so regular public school was already going to be a big adjustment, but the mid-pandemic school experience may be too much for them. Instead, Goodman says she’ll most likely let her sister, an early childhood educator, home-school her daughter along with her sister’s own 5- and 7-year-old kids. “It would only be for the year, hopefully,” she says, “until this crisis is behind us.”
Jessica Sillers, mom of a 5-year-old in Rockford, Maryland, is also nervous about the impact of COVID-19 on her young child’s first school experience. Sillers says she was home-schooled herself but was undecided about whether or not to home-school her kindergartener until the pandemic hit.
“Home schooling is definitely something I was leaning towards,” she says, “but especially in light of the fact that there is a pandemic, and we don’t know what the endpoint of this is, it’s really reinforced that decision. I don’t know what kindergarten is going to look like for any child, but with home schooling, I know what my kid’s kindergarten experience is going to look like.”
The ability to home-school or participate in continued distance learning is a luxury not available to all families. About 55% of moms and 89% of dads work full time, according to a 2019 survey by the Pew Research Center. Additionally, over 40 million Americans have filed for unemployment benefits since the pandemic began, meaning parents in many households are focused on trying to find work and stay afloat financially. That said, many parents may not have the flexibility or time to become their child’s sole teacher right now.
There are also disparities in access to the necessary supplies for home learning. In New York City alone, it’s estimated that 300,000 children don’t have access to electronic devices, like laptops and tablets, for learning. In other communities, just being able to use the internet is a hurdle. A 2018 study by Microsoft estimated that 25 million Americans don’t have access to broadband internet.
The parents we spoke to each have circumstances that make remote learning possible for their kids. Sillers works from home with a flexible schedule that would allow her some leniency to home-school her daughter, and Goodman will likely have school help from her sister. For Barnes, home learning is workable because her children are older and able to be unsupervised for parts of the day so she can work.
Unfortunately, COVID-19 is unlikely to disappear before school resumes. Tens of thousands of people are still being diagnosed with COVID-19 each day, and experts say a vaccine may not be available before the end of the year. Many U.S. school officials are still working on plans for when and how they’ll reopen in the fall, but unless there’s a significant change in the rates of infection or the CDC’s classroom guidelines, it’s likely even more parents may decide that sending their child back to school just isn’t worth the risk.
