Parents weigh in on decision to reopen schools
Will some decide to keep their kids at home?
Before the pandemic came to Rappahannock, Lindsey Wangsgard was the keeper of a busy family calendar. She planned family vacations and fishing trips around basketball games and baseball practices and nature camps — all while running her own small skincare business from home.
“I’m a planner. I’m the kind of mom who has everything laid out. I know what I’m doing months from now,” Wangsgard said.
All of that changed on Friday, March 13, when her three sons, ages 7, 12 and 14, came home from school with instructions to stay home for an early spring break due to the threat of the novel coronavirus. Ten days later, the Virginia governor ordered schools to close indefinitely. In the beginning, her sons were thrilled to be out of school.
But as the reality of the stay-athome order set in, it became less exciting. “Our life has changed,” Wangsgard said. “I went from having full calendars to having nothing on my calendar, you know, and now we have to make a choice, I guess.”
She is one of hundreds of parents in Rappahannock County trying to decide what to do about school in the fall. “Of course I want my kids back in school. But if you watch the news for an hour or two, it’s got you second guessing everything you should be doing,” she said. “I just don’t know if I want to be the trailblazers.”
Some families in the county believe that the risk of reopening schools is worth the reward. Retired kindergarten teacher Brenda Bennett is the custodial guardian of her two grandchildren, Andrew, 5, and Adriana, 10.
The end of the spring semester was tough for Adriana, Bennett said, because she is a hands-on learner and the remote classes posed a challenge. “Luckily we had internet. A lot of our friends didn’t, and it was really hard because they had to go to hot spots with all the children and their siblings and wait there until they finished their work.”
Bennett said unequivocally that she wants her grandchildren to go back to school in the fall.
“If we use the right precautions, we’ll keep them safe,” Bennett said. “I believe that children have to be social to learn. I believe in being safe, but I also believe that children need to socialize.”
But Wangsgard is not easily convinced. When the Rappahannock County School Board sent parents their 20-page plan for reopening on Monday, she said she initially felt overwhelmed.
“Our schools have become the frontlines somewhat, when you think about it,” Wangsgard said. “There is no guarantee of safety when you send your kid to school, even outside of a pandemic . . . . Every day we put our kids in a bus, we’re trusting the system. And I trust the system, I just don’t think any public system can control what’s happening.”
“We will absolutely pick the remote learning option right now,” she said. She believes that the best way to help RCPS protect students and faculty from the coronavirus is to keep her sons at home in the fall.
Wangsgard said she had read a viral Facebook post by an anonymous COVID-19 doctor at Duke University that hit close to home. Reading from the saved file on her phone, she read: “‘There are so, so many people in our communities whose lives and careers and finances will be devastated by having to do remote learning. We will not be. We can do so for a year without undue harm to my kids or our careers or our finances. I choose to keep my kids home so that families who absolutely cannot do so have just a little bit more safety at school.’
“I do feel like I’m in a situation where I can keep my boys home. I can support their education,” Wangsgard said. Before her first son was born, she herself was a public school educator, teaching eighth grade at Taylor Middle School in Warrenton. “I hope that they can make the environment in the school a comfortable and relaxed one, and I think they’re doing their best but it’s going to be hard to do.”
Shannon Ennis, an essential worker for Fauquier County government who lives in Rappahannock, has been working throughout the pandemic and cannot stay home with her two young children. When she read the RCPS
reopening plan, Ennis said she was devastated. “I’ll be honest, I cried last night a er all my family went to bed . . . I felt like a failure to my children that I have to work and that I was going to let them down educationally.”
Ennis is concerned that if her son, 4, and daughter, 5, are not in school, they will fall behind. “We can a ord some form of daycare . . . but daycare doesn’t teach your children,” she said.
A few days ago, Ennis’s daughter, who is going into rst grade, asked her how to write an ‘H.’
“That just shocked me,” Ennis said. “I just feel like she’s already behind and now the two days a week with three days of virtual is going to put her back even more. I probably shouldn’t, but I’m comparing her to other classmates that I know are reading at a better level.”
At Tuesday night’s School Board meeting, Ennis implored the Board to consider allowing more children to attend school at least four days a week. She spoke on behalf of other parents who were essential workers who needed help educating their children.
Ennis said her employer would allow her to work from home some days, but because she can get only satellite internet service, she can’t perform her job. “That’s not the school board’s problem, but it is a real problem in Rappahannock and I think that’s another di culty. But how are you supposed to work from home eight hours and still teach your children?
“Unfortunately women make less,” Ennis continued. “So there are mothers that are going to have to give up their jobs, their careers, and does that mean that they’re going to lose their house and not be able to a ord food?”
Ennis said she doesn’t think it’s the job of the school board to solve everyone’s issues, but she plans to propose an alternative to the RCPS plan. “I think there needs to be four groups: An A and B [as described in the plan], but also Group C that is four days, and Group D for the virtual students . . . I’m hoping if the board sees that a lot of families are doing virtual that it opens up space for 4-day weeks for working parents.”
On that plan, perhaps Wangsgard, Bennet and Ennis might all agree.
“...How are you supposed to work from home eight hours and still teach your children?”