Charlotte’s two COVID realities: Parents — and everyone else
READ MORE
How does Charlotte live with COVID?
From restaurants to doctor visits, how will your life change if COVID is here for good?
Expand All
Surviving in the late-stage pandemic for Erin DeWaters is like trying to run on ice.
From raising 6-year-old Allie Kate, and 2-year-old Cole, to working as the director of communications for Retail Business Services, daily life for her and her husband Zach in Huntersville tests their precision and balance — not to mention patience.
Two weeks ago, they were dealt the latest of countless tests over the last two years.
An employee at her youngest child’s daycare center was surprised to see DeWaters approaching the entrance with her toddler in tow. DeWaters had missed the email sent to parents the night before alerting them a class would be closed down for two weeks, after two kids tested positive for COVID-19.
That was 7:30 a.m.
DeWaters should have been making her way back home to join an 8 a.m. work call with her company’s president and leadership team.
Instead, she left the parking lot in a panic, her blood pressure rising.
She spent the next two hours on the work call, periodically texting her husband who was on the phone with the family’s pediatrician, and Googling what to do next.
“We’re all trying to find what normal means for parenting right now and as we go forward,” DeWaters said later. “Parents have always, and will forever, worry about their children, but the nature of the worry has changed. And this new consideration set seems to be here to stay.”
On the day Cole’s daycare couldn’t take him, the DeWaters family scrambled to figure out how they’d both balance work while also having their son at home for 14 days to quarantine. About the time they started putting that plan in place, they were handed another twist: Actually the daycare would take him back right away — the staff was mistaken which class he was in and there was no positive case after all.
For the mix-up, DeWaters doesn’t blame the daycare, saying “It’s a hard, stressful time ... Mistakes happen. Our daycare is exceptional, and I’m grateful for them every day. The struggle is the uncertainty of COVID throwing a curveball at any time.”
Earlier this month, the CDC and state health leaders amended school guidance to say a COVID exposure should warrant in most cases a five-day quarantine period, instead of two weeks.
In Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools alone in January, more than 5,000 students and 1,200 teachers have had to quarantine over less than one month’s time. In Union County, school board members and the county health department recently joined forces to call for an end to proactive quarantines — a case being made even by some parents who support continued mask wearing and vaccinations.
While the better part of the first year of the pandemic unsettled jobs, home life and social connections for everyone, what’s emerged more recently is a dual reality: Society has largely moved on to the new normal but parents are still living by an older set of rules.
In some families, the extra restrictions placed on students, teachers and schools leave them frustrated. In other instances, families are relieved there are still rules. In all cases, they’re exhausted.
COVID discussion is ongoing
The DeWaters are like nearly one-third of households across North Carolina: Families with children under the age of 18.
For parents of kids who are not vaccinated yet or aren’t old enough for the shots, a single case of COVID in a classroom or at home can trigger a mini-lockdown — hugely disruptive to both parents and a child’s education. For teachers, bus drivers and other school employees, they’re still finding themselves saddled with hours of extra work each week because there aren’t enough subs to fill in for co-workers who are sick or have to quarantine.
There’s a stark contrast between rules for public schools, which many day cares also follow — such as mandatory five-day quarantine periods and required random testing in many places — and the relative fewer restrictions on the rest of public life.
With the latest omicron variant, the positivity rate locally and nationally has soared past previous records. While far more contagious, the strain has — so far — proved less deadly and less likely to cause severe illness, largely thanks to vaccinations.
In the recent surge, most communities stayed far away from adding additional restrictions or lockdowns — but many schools have maintained strict COVID protocols. These policies show schools are still a ways off from treating COVID like an endemic or seasonal illness.
Still for some — especially caregivers and parents with children under 5, for whom no vaccine is yet available — the continuation of school pandemic policies give a sense of security for their child’s health.
DeWaters says her household is regularly discussing COVID.
“During the day, I wait for calls that one of my children has been exposed to COVID and will need to come home to quarantine, that we’ll have to go on the scavenger hunt to find the hard-to-get testing appointment,” DeWaters said.
“In the case of a positive, how will we structure our house so that no one else gets sick? How will we continue to work? Will my kid be one of the growing number that ends up in a pediatric ICU?”
The U.S. Census Bureau’s annual America’s Families and Living Arrangements reports the number of parents with children under age 18 and living at home is around 63.1 million.
In North Carolina, 1.2 million households in the state have at least one child under the age of 18, representing nearly 31% of all households, Carolina Demographics reported in 2017.
Schools and day cares doing their best to aid parents when day-to-day instruction is interrupted may lessen but not fix the problem.
Experts say keeping routines steady is important — especially for the youngest children.
CMS easing the challenges
Bright Beginnings Pre-K, which serves more than 3,200 eligible 4-year-olds across 56 CMS elementary schools, has partnered with the community and families to create the best classroom experiences for children,” says Christopher Law, the director of the CMS pre-kindergarten program.
To keep classrooms as normal as possible, Law says it has been critical with the youngest learners that there is consistency in daily routines, even when staffing is interrupted. When it is, principals have supports in place to continue instruction.
“Parents have been extremely resilient throughout the pandemic,” Law said. “They have worked continuously and supportively with schools and CMS support staff to overcome barriers to access learning for their children.
The first year of the pandemic was chaotic as schools locally and across the country scrambled to create meaningful online instruction. MyELearningWorld, a resource on virtual learning technology and methods for educators, found that despite growing concern from parents about sending their kids to school, 71% think their kids will learn less if schools decide to go fully remote in response to either the current or any future increase in cases.
After witnessing the negative impacts of online instruction, Waxhaw parent Nicole Gruet decided to home school all of her children for the 2020-21 school year. Gruet and her husband have three children ages 7, 10 and 12. They also live in a multi-generational household, so keeping her mother-in-law, who has pre-existing health issues, from becoming ill is a priority.
“Since the vaccine has become available, we have allowed our eldest (a middle schooler) to return to school with a mask,” Gruet said. “Unfortunately for our family, we did get COVID just before the Thanksgiving Day break. My eldest daughter, the one attending public school, became ill before we were formally identified as a close contact.”
Decision-making has changed, many parents said, and the dilemmas aren’t going away.
“Many parents have watched their children struggle being separated from their peers during the earlier portions of the pandemic,” Scott Winstead, founder of MyElearningWorld.com, told the Observer. “It really is difficult to watch. Kids need that social interaction. Not to mention the children who don’t have parental support at home — expecting them to thrive in remote learning is just unrealistic.”
Gruet said this second year of the pandemic is challenging because of staff absences in schools.
“Having students physically attend school does not equate to an uninterrupted continuation of learning if the students are sitting in the cafeteria and gymnasium as staff struggle to cover multiple classes,” Gruet said. “I am worried for our children, but also for our staff. Building administrators, educators, and support staff are being asked to give a herculean effort each day and there doesn’t seem to be a viable solution coming any time soon.”
Charlotte teacher Justin Parmenter, also a father of two, says his kids, ages 10 and 12, have avoided COVID-19 so far. He’s also a seventh-grade English teacher at South Academy of International Languages in CMS.
“When thought there was a possibility that one of my kids might have COVID, my wife has missed work to take care of them and that has impacted our finances,” Parmenter said, adding that both of his kids are vaccinated.
“That has helped some with my fears as a parent considering they are in crowded conditions at school. However, the highly contagious nature of the omicron variant and its ability to infect vaccinated individuals has really increased my worries that they will get sick.”
‘Fed up’
Most of the parents the Observer interviewed believe a return to normal as far as schools and day cares is a long way off.
“It’s going to take a lot of time and effort,” Parmenter said. “Even if COVID disappeared off the planet today we have enormous staffing challenges that are going to require commitment and willingness to collaborate on the part of our elected officials at both the local and state levels. “
In the meantime, not knowing from day to day whether their child will have school, have to quarantine or get tested is weighing heavily on parents.
“A lot of parents are fed up,” Winstead said. “Many simply want the choice — let parents choose, online or in-person. And at the end of the day, I think that’s what it comes down to — they want to be able to take control of their kids’ lives.”
Or in the case of Nancy Nicoll, of Concord, stepping back and allowing her son to tell her what he can handle. Nicoll is the parent of a 22-year-old East Carolina University student, who struggled when ECU shifted to online classes with both the new teaching format and loss of social experience. He opted to take a semester off.
“I did have a hard time knowing that he would be behind,” Nicoll said. “One of my learnings of the pandemic is that we all have to manage our experiences at our own pace. For him, he went back to ECU last semester and was very successful.
“The pressures of the pandemic are absolutely bearing down on parents; managing daily schedules, work commitments, Covid protocols…the list is endless. And with no clear indication when normal will return or what it will look like adds additional pressures to parents. I am sad that my son is not having the experiences of college I had expected, but I absolutely believe there are lessons in all of life’s experiences.”
DeWaters agrees.
“So much of ending COVID is all of us working together and doing our part,” DeWaters said. “It’s anchored in human kindness. The kindness of staying home when you feel sick, of wearing a mask to keep your germs to yourself. Part of growing up is learning how to care for those around you and the world.
“It’s new for parents to guide through big concepts like this, in many cases early on with young children.”
This story was originally published January 23, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
