Pandemic or no, kids move into new phase

For the first time in years, neither of my kids boarded a bus on Monday morning for the first day of school.

This school year begins with unprecedented upheaval, at a time when routines have yielded to what amounts to educated guesswork.

But in our family, the obsolescence of the school bus as a form of transportation would have arrived with or without COVID-19.

Monday was my son’s last first day; he started his senior year in high school in a fashion he and his classmates would not have imagined.

For my daughter, Monday marked her first day in high school.

That meant big brother giving her a ride. No more pre-dawn sprints to the bus stop for the both of them.

It might be the only thing that went as planned.

Here in the Pickerington school district, administrators looking for that balance between education and public health eventually settled on a hybrid schedule.

That means school is in session on Mondays and Tuesdays for the Deckers; the rest of the week they’ll be back with their still-working-from-home father.

After the district pushed the start date back more than once, almost a quarter of the students in Pickerington have opted for an entirely online education this year.

Just up the road, Reynoldsburg also started with a hybrid model. Still other districts remain online only, while a few have kept their in-person schedule Monday-friday, like any other year.

No one can profess to know the best path, and the way forward has not been free of dissent. In Upper Arlington, a dispute over that district’s plan ended up in court.

In our house, Monday began with grumbles about the early start and sibling squabbles over the bathroom. Some things don’t change.

But much has.

Writing in Thisweek West Side, South-western City School District Superintendent Bill Wise acknowledged the depth of all this disruption on children.

“There is a sense of loss and frustration as many of us want to get back to the way things were before the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic,” Wise wrote. “This is especially true when we look at the experiences we want for our children.

“While as individuals, we have our opinions on what should be, could be or needs to be done, perhaps the most unifying opinion is that we want our children to be safe, healthy, happy and learning.”

I took the traditional first-day photographs of the kids on the front stoop, another last for my son.

Then I watched them drive off, a little too fast for their father, on their way to whatever lay in store.

With or without a pandemic, you always wind up watching your kids go. Even absent the virus, I knew a part of me would pine for the way things were before. tdecker@dispatch.com @Theodore_decker