Are We Really Going Back to School?

Janina Morrison, a single mother of two and a doctor in Los Angeles, is looking for some kind of pod (aka a small group of other kids) with a tutor or nanny who can manage the distance learning for her second grader, so she can continue to work.

One Los Angeles mother, who prefers to remain anonymous, is moving with her husband and her two school-age boys to Copenhagen, Denmark, where she grew up, to ride out the next phase of the pandemic. “Boys are excited about actually going to school again, and I’m excited to be in a work space," she says. "For now, that’s all we need for our mental health." The idea is for the kids to try to keep up with remote learning from 5,500 miles away, while also taking in-person language classes in Copenhagen.

“Distance learning didn't work well for us at all,” says Darcy Zalewski, a mother of two school-age kids in Wisconsin. “My kids love our school, and we've always thought highly of our school district. Unfortunately, we had little control over the schedule and work requirements during distance learning. My youngest has a hard time sitting still, so distance learning required me to be at his side until it was done, which makes it extremely difficult to work. There were daily tears over some of the assignments, but I didn't have the control to adjust them. We decided it is more manageable to be completely in charge of the course content and schedule through homeschooling rather than trying to enforce distance learning again.”

“We're all distance [learning] to start,” says Devi Dutta, a mother of two school-age kids and one college freshman, from Berkeley, California. With one of her architecture offices empty, she’s thinking of hosting micropods with another kid for each of her younger children, “so they get some social interaction.” Her eldest is headed to a college dorm, where there is reduced capacity and mostly online learning.

Amanda Cooper, a mother of a tween in Alamada, California, is hoping to supplement her district’s mix of in-person and online learning. “We are going to try to add extracurriculars that parents can teach at a distance,” she says. "Just to give the kids a little something to do.” Her husband will coach volleyball, for instance, and another friend will do an art class.

Amy T. from Raleigh, North Carolina, will continue what she’s been doing from the start. “We've always homeschooled,” she says. “I have kids who are medically complex, and though that's not the primary reason we homeschool, it's always factored into our decision. Now with COVID-19 happening, and our school district plans uncertain and messy, we are more confident than ever in our decision to home educate our children.”

Eileen Mathews, a mother of a rising kindergartner, hasn’t heard yet about the official plans for her school district in Redondo Beach, California. But she does know that her 50-hour-a-week work-from-home job isn’t going to give her the flexibility she would need to manage her son’s first year of school. “I’m at a loss,” she says.

Christine Rinki, a Bay Area mother of two in a two-person full-time working household, needs a way to manage the day-to-day distance learning for her older child, at least part time. One option is a city-run afterschool program offering supervised distance-learning pods plus before- and after-care. “But it’s such a dystopian twist that kids will be learning in front of screens all day by a teacher through a distance modality, but then lower paid, non-unionized rec leaders will be taking on risks that teachers are (rightly) buffered from,” she says.

For Mia Marano, a mother of two in Los Angeles, her role this fall will be more or less as a full-time aide for her younger son, who has special needs. She will manage all virtual classes, create behavior plans, facilitate virtual occupational therapy sessions, speech sessions, counseling, and other services, as well as try to support her older son, who has to be independent in order for it all to work. “It’s a juggling act,” she says.

Meagan An is a mother of three in Portland, Oregon, and her district is offering a choice of online and hybrid learning models — with not many details for what each option might actually look like come fall. “We are leaning toward doing online for the three kids — fifth, sixth, and eighth — but it will be a struggle to manage and implement. It’ll likely be me getting up at the crack of dawn to get a few hours of work done while the kids sleep in, and then start schooling late morning. I am stressed, worried, and not sleeping well,” she says.

For Whitney Sandoval, a mother of two young children and a newborn in Wichita, Kansas, it’s all a moving target, with her district, the governor, and the Board of Education each with their own plans. “If we move to in-person, I will quit and stay home with my kids either doing virtual through the school or doing a homeschool curriculum,” she says. She’s concerned about those who think the virus is a hoax and how they are handling things like masks and social distancing. “I would love to feel comfortable sending my children to school because I literally cannot with them anymore, but the newborn complicates things,” she says.