'I'm barely clinging onto work': Exhausted parents face another wave of school shutdowns

[brooklynite]

Washington Post

Latoya Hamilton had just taken a job as a medical assistant when she got notice last week that her daughter’s school was going online temporarily. The single mother asked for time off. When it was denied, she did the only thing she could: quit.

A lack of child care had prompted Hamilton to resign once before early in the pandemic, when she left her $26-an-hour job at NYU Langone Health to care for her three school-aged children. But this time is different. She feels more alone, she said, and unsure of how to make do, both logistically and financially. Federal assistance has expired, and she has depleted her savings and maxed out her credit cards.

“I am completely by myself now,” said Hamilton, 41 and a resident of Queens who has two children, ages 5 and 12, in New York City public schools, and a 20-year-old daughter with special needs at the Lexington School for the Deaf. “My bills have to get paid, but I can’t just leave my children unattended at home. What am I going to do?”

The latest surge in coronavirus cases prompting school and day-care closures has thrust parents back into familiar terrain, trying to navigate work obligations with a changing patchwork of testing protocols, quarantines and a possible return to virtual schooling.
At least 5,225 schools were disrupted for at least part of this past week because of the pandemic, easily a record for the current school year, according to the data firm Burbio. Public schools in Atlanta and Detroit went completely virtual this week, while others, including in the D.C. suburbs of Montgomery County, Md., and Philadelphia, are making decisions on a school-by-school or class-by-class basis. Chicago Public Schools has shut down altogether because of failed union talks over coronavirus safety measures. And day cares around the country are closing for weeks at a time because of coronavirus outbreaks, worsening a long-simmering child-care crisis.

[Klaralven]

1. Back in the '70s we decided both parents should work, but never solved what to do with the kids

The whole education and child care system needs to be rethought from the ground up.

In particular, it needs better infection control and to care for sick kids as well as healthy.

Even in normal times, schools are plagued with waves of infections that should be prevented. Day cares are full of sick kids.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

2. One of these days we'll realize that while schools *can* be a backstop for services we should

provide elsewhere -- child care, child nutrition, child welfare -- it can never serve as the *only* backstop. Guess we're not there yet, though!

[discocrisco01]

3. Well, we don't want spend the money and this is what we get.

[elias7]

4. No one said dealing with a pandemic was going to be easy

It’s not acceptable or helpful to give up or blame democrats or blame the Chinese or get angry with others out of your own frustrations.

It’s time to pull together. When this all started, I felt this was potential for a grand reset, which we are blowing…

[madville]

5. It's a no win situation as far as pandemic related child care

Even if there was government funded child care, the COVID related shutdowns would affect that as well, still putting working parents in a bind regardless.

The only short term answer would be more cash for people that can’t work due to having to care for their kids. The woman in the article had to quit her $26 an hour job to care for her children, that’s roughly $4000 a month in lost income.

[HagathaCrispy]

6. I had almost 40% of my class out last week

I am a teacher in Texas and out of 16 students in my 7th period class 6 were out with "communicative diseases". We all know what that means. They are throwing two and three classes sometimes in my room which only holds 35 students because most of my classes are over 30 students except for this one. There are not enough substitutes, and paying them minimum wage isn't going to help anything. $7.25 per hour is the minimum wage except if you are a waitress then they pay you like $2 an hour.

[milestogo]

10. Welcome to DU!

Sounds like a crazy and dangerous situation.

[bigtree]

13. this

...

[bigtree]

7. child hospitalizations increased in my state by 281% in the past two weeks

...big numbers for our state, one of the most vaccinated (kids just now getting cleared for vaccinations.

Jayne Miller @jemillerwbal 23h
Number of kids in hospitals in Maryland with Covid up 281% in past 2 weeks

12,945 new Covid cases in Maryland

49 additional deaths

Positivity increases to 29.29%

Hospitalizations increase to 3306.
61 are kids

Montgomery Co. MD public schools reported more than 10,000 COVID-19 cases ahead of their first classes of 2022.
https://wtop.com/montgomery-county/2022/01/montgomery-co-schools-report-10000-covid-19-cases-ahead-of-policy-change/

Most are unvaccinated

Address the needs of these parents and children. If its child care, or if it's the meals their kids get at school or counseling they get there. Find a way to supplement those.

It's a sorry civilization which pushes children into infected schools because they can't work out child care, supplemental food, counseling, and the like.

It's weak, shortsighted governors who are standing flat-footed, pretending they can't ameliorate these concerns and keep these kids out of these virus pits. Right now, the shortage of teachers means kids are lumped together in larger classes, often auditoriums.

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

[Hortensis]

8. The stability that's been our national blessing all our lives

inevitably means that most people now don't have resilience built in to meet big unforeseen challenges. Communities develop programs to assist far lower numbers of more normal times. We don't build our houses to withstand boulders falling from the sky.

How many tens of millions moved far from family, never worrying that they couldn't manage without their support? This is a big one. Never thought to develop even superficial relationships with neighbors with mutual aid in mind, as was routine and expected when disasters were more common and government services unavailable? Another big one. It's not just that this mother doesn't know anyone to ask, it's that neighbors who could help don't know her.

One thing that came out of the Great Recession is that more people started saving, at least something. The national personal saving rate before that was during one period a negative number!

We'll get more national resilience out of this also; and who knows, might even get a few more people voting, and voting to protect a stable national structure within which they're free to pursue their happiness.

More people really should have worried that the combination of a clearly incompetent and...strange president and a world where pandemic disease increasingly has to be fought off could hurt them. Just a few would have made all the difference. But it was all unheard of, couldn't happen, boulders falling out of the sky. Here.

Now it's not.

[phylny]

15. I'm retired and I go up to our daughter and son-in-law's two to three days a week

to babysit my infant granddaughter. My daughter left a full-time job and is working part-time from home. All because we don't want the baby to go to daycare during a pandemic. Don't get me wrong, I love it, but we realize that we are all fortunate to be in the position of taking care of her at home. If I didn't go up, she would have to quit work.

[Hortensis]

17. All the difference in the world for them right now, therefore for you too. :)

We're an hour away from our son and his family, pretty much available on demand when our grandson was younger. Now the grandson comes up now and then to help his grandpa with something.

[wellst0nev0ter]

9. The lack of child care options during a pandemic is a policy choice

[madville]

11. How so?

If schools and daycare centers are shut down due to a pandemic, wouldn’t any other type of child care entity also be shut down for safety as well? Universal or government funded childcare wouldn’t solve the pandemic “shut down” problem for working parents as it would likely be shut down as well.

[wellst0nev0ter]

12. Options include babysitters and podding with other families

These should be addressed in the government response as well, along with modified child care facilities.

[Klaralven]

16. Child care centers should have wards where nursing care is provided to sick children

The alternative is that a parent stays home from work and provides nursing care at home.

[marmar]

14. One of the consequences of the weak social safety net in this country.