Ifs, buts and guinea pigs?

Parents wrestle with looming school decision

When Barnum School in Bridgeport reopens on Sept. 8, Kathleen Rosa’s two youngest kids will be there, masks on. Her oldest will be doing the same at St. Joseph High School in Trumbull, where he will be a sophomore.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, Rosa trusts things will be safe. She can’t see schools opening if they weren’t.

“At home, my kids are bored,” Rosa said. “They miss their friends. They want to see their teachers. Need to be out of the house and at school.”

In Naugatuck, Wendy Tito’s daughter will remain home when the school bell rings this fall.

Tito said she sees what is going on in other places that opened schools too soon. She doesn’t want her third-grader to be a guinea pig.

“Our kids can be carriers and it can definitely spread to our teacher,” said Tito. “I’d feel bad if her teacher got COVID. We need to look out for everyone.”

Across the state, as school superintendents simultaneously craft plans to deliver education and keep everyone safe, parents are weighing in with plans of their own.

When Gov. Ned Lamont announced in late June he wanted all schools to open for in-person learning a full five days a week — a position he has since walked back from — he gave parents the option to override him and keep their kids home to continue district-provided distance learning.

A good number of them are. Half of parents responding to an informal Hearst Connecticut Media online poll say they will stick with distance learning, at least to start. Slightly more than 30 percent say they are definitely sending their kids back to school. The rest are uncertain or are basing their decision not necessarily on what they say is

good but on what needs to happen in order for them to work or their children to successfully learn.

“All things considered, full (reopening) was what I was hopeful for,” said Shari Williams of Easton. She no longer thinks her district is headed in that direction and will instead opt for some kind of blended approach of inschool and at-home learning.

“That is of extreme concern of me,” Williams said, noting that two out of her three children, all students at Joel Barlow High School, need more structure and teacher contact than they received in the spring. Helping them keep up became second full-time jobs for Williams and her husband.

“My fear is it will be a continuation of where we left off in the spring,” said Williams.

Region 9 schools, like all schools in the state, abruptly closed in midMarch, when coronavirus infections were rapidly rising. Now the infection rate is about 1 percent, the lowest in the nation.

As such, Ronald Yoemans, of Darien, said all the science supports a full opening of schools.

“Dr. Fauci, the CDC, pediatricians and child psychologists all support fully opening the schools,” said Yoemans, who has one child, a second-grader. “With some precautions, there is no logical reason not to” send kids back to school.

Yoemans describes his son being in “mask training” now at a summer day camp. For emotional and psychological wellbeing, he adds that his son needs to be back at school with his teachers.

“There is more that teachers do than teach,” Yoemans said. “Schools are where the magic happens,” Yoemans said, adding only now it will be magic with a mask.

No way, says Ramla Shah, of New Haven.

“I won’t send them back because I am scared,” said the mother of five, four of whom attend New Haven magnet schools and the oldest at the University of Connecticut-Stamford. “I don’t want to take a risk on my kid’s life.”

Shah agrees online was not the best choice, but it is better than getting sick.

Her kids have allergies.

They touch things even when told not to. Shah said she can’t risk having the virus come into her home.

Nicole Sasson, of Newtown, agrees.

She has a new baby and a third-grader.

“Socially, she misses her friends, but I don’t think it will be what she thinks it will be when she goes back,” Sasson said.

Will she get to see her teacher smile behind a mask? Will she be reprimanded for getting too close to a friend? Will she be able to breathe in a classroom without air conditioning? Sasson knows the room gets hot.

“I think it will be traumatizing,” said Sasson.

By keeping her daughter home, Sasson said she will help the school achieve socially distant classrooms.

“There are so many unknowns,” Sasson said. “What if (sending kids back) makes a giant cluster of cases. I don’t want to see anyone in our town get this because we weren’t prepared.”

But in Greenwich, parent Julie Shropshire said this much she knows: “It’s important for them to see their teachers face to face and not to have as much screen time.”

She is sending her three daughters back.

“I think every family has to do what’s best for them and their children,” said Shropshire. “We are going to play everything by ear, but come Sept. 8, all three will be in school, with masks, ready to learn and make the best of it.”

Olga Bruce, of Greenwich, has two girls, one going into fifth grade, the other into second, and also plans to send her daughters to school.

“I had a terrible experience with distance learning and the main reason was that the teachers barely had any interaction with my children,” Bruce said. “I feel that if my children go into the school, then the teachers will be actually teaching the lectures instead of sending the kids links to other sites.”

Mable Thorne, of New Haven, said she wants her kids to get in-person learning, too, and has faith that the schools are looking to do the right thing.

The two children she and her husband care for — a godson and a foster child — will go back to school in September.

One goes to Nathan Hale in New Haven, the

other to the Bridgeport Learning Center.

“The kids need school,” Thorne said. She and her husband do, too. They work full time. Thorne, however, is looking to see if there are employee benefits that will allow her to hire someone to watch the kids if schools only partially reopen or return to full remote learning.

Soshanna Barnaby, whose three daughters go to Amistad Academy Charter School in New Haven, has to work, too, but said she won’t send her kids back to an environment she feels is unsafe.

Barnaby has yet to see a school reopening plan that provides her with reassurance.

One daughter has asthma.

“They need a game plan” but don’t seem to have one, Barnaby said. “They are going on if’s and but’s. It’s like they are ... gambling. To a lot of parents, that is frustrating. It’s going to come down between your children and your job.”

Katherine Velez, a parent from Stamford who can continue to work from home as a clinical social worker, remains unsure.

One day she feels almost

certain she will keep her daughter home.

She described homeschooling as a piece of cake.

The next day she worries that her second-grader needs to be in school where she can socialize.

“Then I wonder how much socializing will they do with masks on,” said Velez.

What Velez thinks she would prefer is the hybrid model where a reduced number of children will cycle through the school on various days of the week.

“I don’t know what will be the deciding factor,” Velez said. “Our numbers in Connecticut are great right now but what if there is a second wave and they are all sent home anyway?”

If she starts in person, Velez said, at least her daughter will get an introduction to the classroom, her teachers and the other kids.

“We will see,” Velez said. “I read the articles. I think (school officials) are doing the best they can with the situation they have. Whatever they decide, they are not going to please everybody.”