Parents put to the test

Many are fearful of sending children back to school, especially kids with preexisting medical conditions

Savannah and Avalon Walter miss school. They miss hanging out with their friends.

It’s been quite a while since the girls, ages 11 and 8, were in a classroom. Like kids across the state, their past school year was cut short by the coronavirus. A mandated statewide shutdown has shuttered schools since mid-March.

But that will likely change this fall.

Schools across Pennsylvania, including in Berks County, are looking to revive in-person instruction when the 2020-21 school year begins in little over a month. The Allentown diocese has already announced plans to start the school year with in-person classes.

Plans are being put in place, precautions being crafted. School officials are working to find ways to protect students and staff from infection.

The risk just isn’t worth it for Savannah and Avalon’s mother, Raven Kochel. As long as COVID-19 is still around, Kochel said her girls won’t be returning to school.

“I just can’t take the risk of them getting it,” she said.

Kochel’s concern is wellfounded. Savannah and Avalon, along with their 2-year-old sister Lila, all have congenital heart disease. The elder two also each suffer from asthma.

That puts them at great risk. A case of coronavirus could be devastating, possibly fatal.

Kochel said that a normal cold knocks them for a loop, hitting them much harder than it does typical children.

“In winter, if they get sick they get really sick,” she said.

Kochel, whose girls attend the Wilson School District, said she doesn’t feel enough can be done to make schools safe from the coronavirus. It’s not that she doesn’t think Wilson officials are doing all they can, but that a suitable plan just doesn’t exist.

Take, for example, a mask. Kochel said she doesn’t think her daughters will want to wear a mask all day, and figures other kids will probably feel that way, too.

“It’s hard enough to get them to keep a mask on for 10 minutes when they go into the grocery store let alone for seven hours,” she said.

Kochel said she is hoping Wilson — which hasn’t finalized plans for the fall — will offer an online option for students similar to what was offered in the spring. If not, she said, she’ll resort to homeschooling.

“I know what my house looks like. I know what precautions we have in place,” Kochel said.

The Trump administration has been encouraging the resumption of in-person classes, saying children are not as harmed by COVID-19 as adults. However, scientists also continue to study the issue.

Among parents who responded to the Reading Eagle’s request for comments about sending their children back to school, there was little sentiment in favor of in-person classes.

‘Guinea pigs’

Tia Mazy agrees that coming up with an adequate COVID-19 safety plan for school is likely an impossible task.

“I don’t know that there’s anything the school can offer at this time that would make me feel comfortable that they’re there,” she said.

Mazy has two children in the Wilson School District: a daughter entering ninth grade and a son in middle school. Neither will be headed back to the classroom this fall, instead both taking the online option.

For Mazy, the decision is simple: her kids’ health and safety aren’t worth the risk.

“I’m not prepared to use my kids as guinea pigs,” she said.

Mazy’s son suffers from asthma, and her daughter has an autoinflammatory disorder.

“With a regular illness she can get super knocked down,” she said. “I’m not keen on seeing what would happen with this virus.”

Mazy said she is not concerned that schools won’t put the right precautions in place to keep kids and school staff safe. Her worry lies with those guidelines being followed.

“My main concern falls into this crazy anti-mask and mask divide that has started,” she said. “Unfortunately, you see a lot of opinions of parents coming through kids.”

Mazy said she worries some students won’t take safety measures like wearing masks and social distancing seriously. Or, even worse, they’ll bully kids who do.

“I would be concerned with someone intentionally coughing on people,” she said. “It’s something kids might kind of find funny, but it could be harmful and devastating at a time like this.”

And making sure that kind of stuff doesn’t happen will be tough to do, Mazy said.

“It’s just asking a lot of the teachers and the other staff in the building to be on top of this,” she said. “I just don’t think it’s a foolproof system.”

‘No perfect solution’

Jennie Maher is the mother of seventh- and fifth-graders in the Wyomissing School District. She also said keeping schools safe won’t be possible.

If they open up, it’s more than likely going to create a spike in coronavirus cases, she said.

“Realistically, I don’t think it’s feasible,” she said of opening schools this fall. “No matter what we do, I just feel like there are too many things going against it working.”

Maher said she’s in favor of starting the school year the way last school year ended: online.

Although, she added, that has disadvantages too. Relying on virtual learning could serve to widen the achievement gap between privileged and underprivileged students, she said.

One idea that she has come across that she said she found interesting is to open school buildings, but not for in-person classes. Instead, students could chose to work online there, able to

spread out and keep a safe distance.

That would address concerns about working parents who rely on school for child care, she said, and make sure students have access to technology and the internet.

At this point, Maher said she hasn’t decided exactly what she’ll do this fall.

“Honestly, my husband and I are still trying to figure that out,” she said. “My gut instinct is to keep them home. It would kill me to do that, though.”

Maher said she doesn’t think that online education is better than in-person instruction, far from it. But if it’s a choice between being in class and keeping her kids from getting sick, that may be the route she has to take.

“Really, there’s no perfect solution by any means,” she said.

‘I will be scared’

That’s the same way Kristy Graeff feels.

Her daughter will be 13 when school starts, attending Muhlenberg Middle School. Graeff doesn’t feel great about it.

“I don’t feel very confident,” she said.

Graeff said schools are notorious as places where sickness spread like wildfire. She said her daughter got head lice two years in a row because of outbreaks at school.

“If they can’t control head lice, how are they going to control a virus?” she said.

But Graeff is in a tough situation. She works second shift, which makes it difficult for her to be around to oversee her daughter learning from home.

And, she added, her daughter suffer from asthma.

Muhlenberg School District has not yet unveiled its official COVID-19 safety plan, but Graeff said she hopes it includes things like taking temperatures for everyone entering the school, enhanced sanitizing and other precautions.

But even that won’t ensure her daughter is safe.

“It’s not going to be 100%,” she said. “I will be scared.”

Graeff said she’s still undecided about whether or not she’ll send her daughter to school this fall. A lot depends on what she sees in the school district’s plan.

“At this point, with her health and with my health, I would not feel comfortable sending her to school,” she said.

‘Matter of time’

Angela Nolan is on the same page.

“I am absolutely not comfortable sending my children back to in-person school this fall,” she said.

The mother of a seven year old and five year old who go to school in the Wilson School District, Nolan said she just can’t picture kids going back to classrooms working out, regardless of what safety measures are put in place.

“My daughter won’t wear a mask for more than five minutes, no matter how much I practice with her at home,” she said of her kindergartner.

Nolan said that if schools reopen, COVID-19 will be impossible to keep out.

“We’re just at a time where everything is so uncertain, it’s a very, very scary time,” she said. “And it’s just a matter of time before there’s a case at a school.”

After so many people made so many sacrifices to help slow the spread of the coronavirus, Nolan said it would be a shame to erase it all by rushing kids back to class.

“We worked to hard by being in quarantine, why would we feel comfortable sending our kids off to a situation like that?” she said. “We’ve been so diligent.”

Nolan said it appears that Wilson will offer an online options for students this fall, and her daughters will utilize it. She said she’ll only send them back to school when a “proven vaccine” is available and the coronavirus is “no longer a threat.”

She said having her girls learning from home is a challenge, but that she’s able to work fulltime from home to make sure their attention stays on schoolwork. Sometimes that means she has to put off her own work until after they go to bed, sometimes working into the early hours of the morning, but that’s a sacrifice she’s willing to make.

Her focus is on keeping her family safe.

“It’s better to have them home-schooled than to lose a parent,” she said.