I’m sending my son to school this week. I’m OK with that. I think.
School begins this week for my two sons. I’m a little excited. I’m a little nervous. I’m more than a little uncertain about the decisions we’re making.
One son is entering his junior year of high school. He’ll be learning remotely, as Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools mandated because of COVID-19. Like so many parents, I worry his learning experience will be diminished in front of a screen. But my son is self-motivated and organized - far more than I was at his age. He should be fine.
Our other son is entering his sophomore year at an out-of-state college. All of his classes are online, but he’s heading to school anyway so that he can participate in research. His mother and I could have kept him home, but he’s in an off-campus apartment, not a crowded dorm. He’s been thoughtful about COVID-19 here this summer, and we think he can do the same there this fall.
If all of that sounds more like hope than science, well, yes.
If it also sounds slightly different than the caution our Editorial Board has consistently preached with COVID - yep, that’s not totally wrong, either.
Welcome to the age of inconsistency, of rationalization, of science versus risk, science versus need, science versus what I really want so that at least a little of my life can seem like something close to normal.
For the more privileged among us, that’s part of what this school year is about. We want to be safe with the virus, but we’d like to see our kids in class so that they can learn more effectively and see friends and have something closer to the days they used to have. For other children, the need is more urgent - staying home means falling further behind or living in unhealthy or dangerous conditions.
That’s why all of us, to some degree, are willing to calculate with COVID-19. How much risk is worth the payoff? It’s a question we’re asking each day, not just with school but in most every part of our lives.
It’s why so many Americans marched in protests this summer even as the virus spiked. It’s why you decided your beach trip was OK if you stayed distant from others and ordered takeout. It’s why so many of us have quarantine “families” - small circles of friends we trust are doing the right things with COVID so that we can have them in our backyards.
Do we know those friends are thoroughly safe with the virus? Not really. But we calculate - risk vs. reward vs. need vs. want. “I’d give us a 85% on the CDC guidelines scale,” one friend to me last week about her quarantine circle. “Some of this is just a leap of faith, no matter how hard you try to do it all right.”
Schools are making the same kind of calculations - and the same kind of leaps. CMS and other remote-only districts are calling churches and non-profits to see if they can host pop-up “classrooms” to offer children a place with technology and less COVID vulnerability. Private schools are adopting a remote/in-person hybrid with hopes they have the agility to make it work. Colleges are appealing to students - and cracking down on them - hoping that they’ll understand the link between behaving and getting to remain on campus.
Will it work? We’re off to a rocky start at UNC and other college campuses, but I hope so. I hope the students at school this week get to safely stay at school - and that we can learn from COVID successes and apply them to more schools. I also hope all of us - even those like me who steer toward caution - can find room to consider different, reasonable perspectives on what’s safely best for all.
That’s an impossible calculation, by the way, when what’s safe and what’s best collide the way they have this year. Maybe the best we can have is a lot of science - and a little bit of hope.
This story was originally published August 16, 2020 at 7:47 PM.