School’s starting soon. Why are parents and kids still in limbo?

Despite broad agreement on the importance of in-person instruction, many say there’s been a lack of official planning and resources provided to help schools reopen safely, as the COVID-19 pandemic appears far from over.

Karla Hayward, a working parent in Newfoundland, finally got back to her office in July, while her daughter has come home from camp each afternoon, as Mom puts it, “sweaty and starving, just as I want her to be.”

Yet when she looks ahead to the fall, she has no idea if she’ll still be at the job in marketing that she loves, because her 5-year-old might be stuck at home again. Although her employer has figured out how to get staff back to work, and her kid’s summer camp is operating, there is no concrete plan – or even a best guess in many places – for how to get millions of school-aged children in North America safely back to class.

Instead, she feels that authorities have left families – and particularly women – to simply “figure it out.”

“There is a pervasive thought that women know how to deal with the children, women will figure it out,” she says. “But coping with something for a few months is very different than coping with something looking out over a year. I literally don’t know how I do it on top of working full time.”

As governments allow restaurants, malls, and even gyms to reopen with strict new guidelines, the 2020-21 academic year is seeming to many a policy afterthought, something for local school districts or families to solve.

In the United States, the debate has surged in recent days as President Donald Trump has pressured governors to reopen schools in person come fall. Yet with COVID-19 cases climbing across many states, and several large urban school systems already announcing plans for online-only or hybrid instruction, a full return to school appears unlikely to occur for many students.