Parents Expected a More Normal School Year—Not Fresh Covid Stress

Because it looked so certain that children would be back in the classroom this fall, many parents didn’t think they needed daytime child care. Now they fear stop-and-start quarantines, periods of virtual learning and ad-hoc arrangements as schools try to keep doors open while coping with outbreaks. Some of the opened schools are already reverting to virtual learning for those children stuck at home due to Covid-19. And some districts aren’t guaranteeing immediate virtual instruction if classrooms close, parents say.

Parents are asking schools to clarify or tighten their policies—to re-examine the 3-foot social distancing the CDC recommended for school children last spring, for instance—and to promise they will be notified if a classmate or teacher becomes infected. And they are trying to craft contingency plans for school closures or needed quarantines as they juggle worries about their family’s health and their job security.

“I tell parents to put everything on the table,” says Debra Isaacs Schafer, consultant to employers and working mothers and founder of Education Navigation, an employee-benefits company focused on working parents and caregiving. “Evaluate everything—from a work, family and home perspective. This is work-life on steroids.”

Vaccines still provide strong protection against severe illness and death. Unvaccinated people account for the overwhelming majority of hospitalizations and deaths. Yet scientists are still learning about how much of a threat the Delta variant poses to vaccinated adults, who can still contract and transmit it to others, and to children under the age of 12, who aren’t yet eligible for shots.

Some big employers have postponed a September return to the office for some or all employees. But many businesses are eager to see their workers back at their desks, creating difficult decisions for parents, says Jonathan Hyman, a father of two and an employment attorney in Avon, Ohio.

“Last year, businesses were generally more understanding,” he says. But as schools reopen, some employers are taking a less accommodating stance. His 15-year-old daughter is to start school Wednesday, provided she passes a Covid-19 test she has just been told to get, he says. When he called the doctor about her sore throat and runny nose that morning, the nurse told him they’d had dozens of vaccinated children test positive in the prior two weeks. “We’ll see a lot of kids get sick. It’s not if, but when,” Mr. Hyman says.

Summer camps and children’s programs offer a glimpse of what parents might face during the school year. Sporadic Covid-19 outbreaks interrupted some day and overnight camps and sent children into quarantine just when their parents expected them to be occupied all day. For families with more than one child, the disruptions multiply.

The bind puts tremendous pressure on parents. Julia Loehlein, the mother of a 7-year-old in Glenmoore, Pa., worries about her son, who starts first grade at the end of the month. He’s healthy now, but was born prematurely, had chronic lung disease and was on oxygen for six months as an infant, she says.

“It’s too early to really understand how [Covid] could affect him,” she says. She’s also worried about proving herself in her brand-new collections and customer-service job. She left her old job in July because she needed more flexibility, and fears another year of back-and-forth schooling and the juggling of child care with her husband, who also has a new job. “I want to be a good employee, present, learning and productive,” she says.

Mika Cross was planning for a triumphant back-to-school season—a return to the classroom for her rising ninth-grader and a college send-off for her 18-year-old daughter.

Ms. Cross, a workplace consultant and transformation strategist in southern Maryland, learned that the Delta strain was spreading fast in Southern California—right where her daughter would soon begin freshman year at Whittier College. Until then, she had been fretting about whether her daughter would have enough socks. Suddenly she was shocked to realize that what her daughter really needed was an advance medical directive and a medical power of attorney—the legal documents that would enable Ms. Cross to make medical decisions if her daughter were to become severely ill.

“It was like ‘Lord help me,’ ” Ms. Cross recalls thinking. “We’re less than one week away from wheels up.”

For younger students, child care—if you can get it—is often expensive.

A supervised study hall was offered last year at Ms. Loehlein’s son’s school, with children at desks in a classroom, taught virtually but with an adult on-site to help them get on Zoom and sign into apps. It is an option she might have to consider if it is offered again, though it cost $400 a month.

Last year, Meegan Massagli, a San Francisco mother of two, spent $40 an hour for someone to oversee remote learning for her children, who are now 8 and 10. “That’s what we paid so I wouldn’t have to quit my job,” says Ms. Massagli, who is director of the customer action center at Kaiser Foundation Health Plan. Cost aside, “I might lose my mind if my kids don’t go back to school,” she says.

Some parents are hoping to enlist relatives if classes shut down and distance learning returns. “I will call in all the favors I can get,” says Ramona Seemann, a mental-health counselor and mother of three in New Orleans, who hopes to be able to call on her mother-in-law and niece.

She has had a tough time lining up care for her 1-year-old. Because her older children’s school has loosened some of last year’s safeguards—that children be masked and kept in small cohorts on the playground—she’s anticipating that her 9- and 7-year-olds might end up in remote or hybrid school again.

“We’re going to take it an hour at a time,” she says.

Write to Betsy Morris at [email protected]