Parents across the country will struggle with child care if schools don't reopen for in-person learning this year—but many parents would much rather try to figure that problem out than deal with the coronavirus in their families. That's especially true of Black parents, who have watched the pandemic hitting Black people hardest and are under no illusions about the safety of going back to school.
Poll after poll has found a majority of Black and Latino parents supporting all-remote learning, while white parents are more likely to support in-person schools. In a recent Consumer Reports survey, 57% of Black parents, 52% of Latino parents, and just 25% of white parents said schools should remain closed to start the year. And in interviews, Black parents are clear about why: “To be honest, I don’t have faith in the system right now,” one Black mother and Manhattan high school guidance counselor told Consumer Reports.
“Unfortunately, so many in the Black community have passed away from COVID-19,” another woman said. “It’s extremely dangerous to a lot of us because of underlying medical issues like diabetes and high blood pressure caused by choices we’ve made or that have been made for us over centuries. My son is extremely asthmatic, and I do not want him exposed to COVID-19.”
Yolanda Logan, the parent engagement coordinator for the schools in Oxford, Mississippi, heard the same concerns again and again as she made home visits to students in her district in July, OZY reports. Parents worried about their children’s health, and about the quality of medical care they’d receive—relevant given persistent racial disparities in the quality of care. Children worried about their parents’ health—“I can’t go back, Mr. Harvey,” one student told the schools superintendent. “My mother has asthma”—and about their ability to keep working and help support their families through the COVID-19 economy. “You [could] hear the intensity in their voices, hear their forcefulness,” Logan said of opposition voiced by people at the Black church she attends.
Black and Latino parents interviewed by Consumer Reports cited their multigenerational households, with one saying: “I’m concerned that my kids aren’t socializing enough, but I’m more concerned about the people at the homestead, like my mother-in-law and an older neighbor who the kids see all the time.”
Some families are saying they will choose keeping their children home even if it means losing their jobs. The New Teacher Project, a nonprofit that promotes equity in education, heard that from some parents at a Tennessee focus group the organization held, and multiple parents told Consumer Reports the same.
Keeping students home may carry significant academic losses, especially for families that don’t have access to reliable internet access or enough devices for their kids, as well as families where parents aren't able to devote hours each day to helping their kids with schoolwork themselves or hire someone to do so. But when the stakes are life and death, those concerns can seem small. And this points to a national reckoning in a year (we hope in a year), when schools have to decide whether or how to penalize kids who fell behind during this disaster. Will schools adjust expectations and figure out how to value kids where they are, or will less-privileged kids be punished for not meeting arbitrary testing guidelines? We need to be getting ready for that now rather than kicking one more problem down the road to be an emergency when it finally hits full force.