Just overheard a conversation from a teacher on school closings during the pandemic

[TBF]

82. We homeschooled for a year -

the hardest thing was missing the arts. I think for the youngest kids it was being on screens and missing social time. Obviously not ideal, but we had no clue what we were dealing with initially.

I live in Texas so our district was only technically online for a couple months with the mandatory stay at home (March-May when it started). We are near a medical center and the parents needed to be at work (nurses etc) - so some went to school, and some did remote when they re-opened that fall. The problem, of course, was that only certain people were at high risk - teachers who were older and/or had chronic illnesses, parents/grandparents at home, some students with medical issues. And we didn't know how long vaccines would take & whether they'd be effective. That said, we braved it at home for a year and then sent them back once vaccinated (hoping for the best).

It's really hard to look at something like that in hindsight. I remember at the time my husband and I discussing that they should have opened up the schools for the kids that needed to be there (parents who really didn't have good options for caring for them) and staff it with college students - less likely to get sick than older teachers. There definitely weren't any great solutions at the time.