The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted new challenges for parents when it comes to their children’s education. Amid stay-at-home orders, social distancing, and travel restrictions, parents have to make important and potentially tough decisions about their children’s education in the fall.
Local school districts have started unveiling their plans for reopening in the new school year. For most, school is going to look vastly different than it did in March, with reduced class sizes, mandatory face masks, and temperature checks. There is also the looming threat of additional closures in the fall or winter when public health officials anticipate a second wave of the virus to emerge.
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During these unsettling times, parents want to be extra cautious when it comes to the health and safety of their children. For some families, this may mean pulling children out of a traditional brick-and-mortar school and keeping them at home.
A new national study of 2,000 parents with children in traditional elementary and secondary schools revealed that nearly 1 in 5 students who were attending a brick-and-mortar school as of March are unlikely to return this fall.
Applying this percentage to the 56 million school-age children in the United States, that means nearly 10 million K-12 students will be displaced from classrooms and in need of other educational options.
The survey confirmed that many parents share the same concerns about school safety expressed by education leaders and public health experts. Even with stringent preventive measures in place, including reducing class sizes to encourage social distancing, requiring students, teachers, and staff to wear face masks and regular cleaning, nearly a quarter of parents believe it may be too risky for their children to go back to their brick-and-mortar school.
A significant number of these families are considering full-time online public schools for their children.
In addition to being a safer option for children, mandatory lockdowns have forced many schools to shift education online, and as a result, many families are seeing the value in online education. According to the survey, 80% reported they were satisfied with their child’s transition to online learning this spring.
Thanks to this positive experience, more than 40% of parents are considering continuing online learning for their child next year, with 17% strongly considering enrolling their child in a full-time online public school in the fall.
Putting that number into perspective, that’s about 8.7 million students.
We are on the crux of an educational crisis. In a matter of months, millions of children will not be returning to traditional classrooms, as their parents search for a better and safer option.
Unfortunately, thanks to outdated public policies and artificial barriers designed to prevent parents from exercising their right to choose the best education for their child, the number of “online seats” available simply won’t be able to meet the increased demand.
Policymakers at the federal and state level and on both sides of the aisle must come together to ensure online public schools have what they need to meet demand. That means lifting enrollment caps on online schools, removing prior public requirements, and ensuring that these programs have adequate funding.
Parents should never be forced to choose between their children’s health and their education, precisely the choice that these barriers to online education create.
Policymakers must do what’s right and put the needs of students and families first by supporting policies that allow families to choose online learning. This is not the time to deny parents choice over their children’s education. The solution for many parents will be online education because virtual schools kept teaching when the pandemic forced traditional public schools to close.
Colleen Cook is a parent and a board president of the National Coalition for Public School Options.
