Back to School in a Pandemic
We have every tool to save our kids, and yet...
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This is Men Yell at Me, a newsletter that explores the intersection of politics and power in red-state America. If you like it, consider subscribing. If you hate it, you can subscribe too.
Sitting in my office, organized into neat little piles, are all the supplies my children need to go back to school. Pencils, folders, rulers, crayons, and dry-erase markers. I’ve washed backpacks and coats and lunchboxes. We’ve gone through clothes and made lists of what they need: socks, underwear, sweaters, and my daughter wants to wear jumpsuits now. So, those too.
It’s an accumulation of possessions, each one a tool. Each one a small gift. We’ve picked them out with care. I’ve sorted through last year’s supplies and found what we can reuse — glue, pens. My daughter has spent hours putting stickers on her folders. My son has made sure the pilot’s wings he got on vacation and the Shrinky Dink keychain he made with his aunt are all firmly attached to his backpack.
I have boxes of masks too. I’ve been stockpiling. The kinds they like. Paper ones with tie-dye designs. I put them in ziplocs in their backpacks. Please wear them, I tell my kids. Wear them.
But I cannot force them to. Most of their friends won’t be wearing masks. I have no idea about the teachers or anyone else in the building.
I am once again sending my kids to school in the middle of a pandemic. We live in Iowa, a state that passed a law preventing schools from mandating masks. I don’t know the vaccination status of my kids’ teachers. Cases in Iowa are rising, and they are almost as bad as they were last August when school started. The state has a 50 percent vaccination rate. And in my county there is a 55 percent vaccination rate. Right now, the positivity rate in Linn County is 15 percent.
Eric Topol @EricTopol
Current top 5 cases/capita in the world for country/state population > 1M 1. Florida 138/100,000 2. Georgia (country) 121/100,000 3. Louisiana 116/100,000 4. Mississippi 115/100,000 5. Botswana 89/100,000 https://t.co/dskhwTJ3sd https://t.co/hEwzulIPwJLast year, Gov. Kim Reynolds didn’t make reporting cases in schools mandatory and teachers told me there was a lot of undertesting and underreporting. This year, Reynolds has refused to admit that children can contract and spread COVID. A reality that has been proven over and over again. She refuses to admit that masks work.
Legally, Iowa’s lawmakers have taken away school’s’ ability to enforce the one thing that we know prevents the spread of a deadly disease and have also prevented them from moving to online-only education, should an outbreak occur. So, here we are. Stripped of every enforcement tool to keep our kids safe from a deadly virus.
Other states are facing similar tensions and handling them differently. Some districts are fighting back—hiring lawyers, working around the laws. Already in Mississippi, 20,000 students are in quarantine from COVID exposure, five have died. Just days after restarting in-person learning, Louisiana has thousands of children in quarantine after positive tests.
I am more afraid this year than I was last year. Last year, the school sent out a five-tiered plan that involved wearing masks, staying in groups, and social distancing. This year, school starts on Aug. 23, and I don’t even know what COVID precautions the school is taking. I’ve resisted emailing. Because I am always that mom. Especially since March 2020. I’ve been that mom asking about procedures, rules, precautions. The principal is palpably irritated with me.
But I did finally email. The answer: We will let you know.
Friends of mine tell me they are homeschooling. I’ve heard stories again about pods and hiring tutors. I don’t have those options. I don’t think many parents do. And for my family, the reality is more complicated. Their co-parent and I don’t agree on some of the fundamentals about this pandemic. Before, when masks and COVID mitigation procedures were mandated, I could lean on the rules. Now? Now? What do I have?
If one more person tells me to tell my kids just to mask up, I will scream at them. All I do is talk to my kids. Our whole lives for the past year and a half have been one hard conversation after another. What about, public health policy? How did we do this for over a year and the best response is just “talk to your kids.”
We have all the tools to make our children’s school year safe, but our governments refuse to use them.
When your plan rests on the personal responsibility of the elementary school crowd to mask up, your plan is not a plan at all. Your plan is a disaster.
I understand that all parenting always involves some level of risk. I cannot control the world that my children enter. I wrote about this in 2016, the year my marriage fell apart. That was the year my then-husband took our family on a Disney Cruise. At the time, I wrote:
Parenting is a territory marked out by the illusion of safe zones. In pregnancy, you breathe a sigh of relief when you are out of the miscarriage zone. When your baby is born, you look forward to your child being out of the SIDS zone. Then there is sleep training, potty training, kindergarten. Each milestone marks the exit from one danger zone, hopefully into a safer zone. But the grim reality eventually becomes apparent: the safe zone you’re looking for does not exist. Babies roll over in their sleep; they crawl over to light sockets; they grab for the bleach. They make friends with the kid who’ll get arrested on prom night; they get phones that open them to worlds you cannot control. They start texting. They start driving. There is always a threat.
Giving life means accepting the reality of death. I understand that. I also know that I cannot shield them from reality, but I can arm them for it.
But how can I do even that when at every level, every weapon that I have has been taken away from me? It’s a cruelty I wish were unimaginable. But we’ve seen it before.
I was a sophomore in high school when Columbine happened. One day we could wear our backpacks in the halls. The next, we had to lock them in the lockers. The whole world shifted.
When your plan rests on the personal responsibility of the elementary school crowd to mask up, your plan is not a plan at all. Your plan is a disaster.
Looking at the objects in the office. Looking at my children’s backpacks. I think of the things my friends and I used to carry into school. How Patty carried a pink Koosh ball dangling from the zipper of her backpack and a pin with the picture of her boyfriend in his football uniform. Jon carried a pin with the words “Rise up Proletariat” emblazoned across a picture of a raised fist. Justine bought her backpack from a second-hand store and carried it with one strap slung across her right shoulder. Adam had a black backpack with a Nine Inch Nails patch pinned to the top with two safety pins. Jamie carried a backpack with a large sticker proclaiming “WWJD?”
The things we carried were determined largely by who we wanted to be and who we thought we were. I carried The Story Girl by L.M. Montgomery and snuck glances at it in between classes.
We carried our lives in our backpacks, until the day two students, our age, went into their school and shot their classmates.
Up until that day, our daily burden had been containable by the black zippers of our brightly colored Jansport. After that, what we carried was so much more. In lieu of laws that would make it harder to take a gun into a school, schools have metal detectors, mass shooter drills, police officers, and rules about what students can carry. We made students responsible for our legislative failures.
Yesterday was my last day at the pool with my kids before school started. I watched them swim, those soggy, golden-haired, gap-toothed wonders. I wanted just to stay there all day. I never wanted to leave the sun and the outdoors and the freedom of that moment. I do not want to go into the cold and the fall. I do not want to go inside again. But soon, it’s time to go and my kids are ready.
And so, what can I do? I count out the pencils. Buy more hand sanitizer. I buy my son a sweater on sale at Land’s End. I make sure we have chapstick and tissues. I pack them all in their backpacks. I’ve given them everything I can to keep them safe in a world determined to destroy them. And what I have to give is not enough.
Further Reading:
Last year, I wrote about the terror of my son getting a cold during the school year. For The New York Times, Jessica Valenti wrote about the fear of having an unvaccinated kid. Here is my essay about going on the Disney Cruise.
Men Yell at Me is a newsletter about the places where our bodies and politics collide and yes, the occasional yelling man. Learn more about it and me (Lyz) here. You can sign up to receive the free weekly email, which includes interviews, essays, and original reporting. The Friday email is a weekly round-up of dinguses, drinks, and links. On Monday I have a subscribers-only open thread where we discuss politics, food, dogs, our bodies, and more.
It is so hard. I am really and truly shaken by the lack of humanity and care people are showing for each other. I don’t know what to do with the constant low thrum of anxiety and anger. Homeschooling and pods aren’t a realistic option for us and we considered a private school that is going above and beyond but 60k wasn’t a viable plan. I will probably regret that if my kids get seriously sick though. Open house was a real mixed bag school is crowded again, classes move through the school, I live in a pretty conservative area so while masks are mandated the vibe about them is negative. I hope your kids have a safe year and enjoy their first days. The only thing I am clinging to is how happy my kids are about school, it is a small comfort but I am taking it
Thank you Lyz for describing how a lot of parents, grandparents, and loved ones feel. Terrified and helpless, especially in Iowa and other states with governors who believe making a political point to the cult is more important than children's health and well-being. Who thinks that elementary school kids will "do the right thing" when we've seen grown adults who can't and won't "do the right thing"?
They don't care, because like the Texas governor, if they and their families get COVID they will have all the best treatments and care. They'll sit maskless inside buildings at the state fair with thousands of unvaccinated people, eating deep fried turds on a stick and posting pics on Instagram. Meanwhile, others in their state will die, be left debilitated with long-haul COVID, and have medical bills that will send them into bankruptcy.
Yes, I'm angry. I'm worried. What person who has little ones in their lives wouldn't be? Most of all, I'm brokenhearted that we have so many people in this country who don't give a damn about others. So many that are brainwashed by the cult of misinformation, lies, and hypocrisy. How many who will want to leave nasty comments on posts like this call yourselves "Christians"? The Iowa governor does. She claims to care about life, but only when it's an unborn fetus. Not a walking, talking 5 year old who is too young to get vaccinated and going to school in a pandemic.
People are tired. Parents are mentally and physically exhausted. Kids are either stressed and scared, or their young brains aren't able to process the danger. Just because you're tired at the end of a work day doesn't mean you don't put your seatbelt on and drive safely back home. Younger kids don't understand this. If you put a mask on them in the morning, but all their friends and maybe even teachers aren't wearing a mask, do you honestly think the mask will still be on at 3pm?
Please don't talk about "freedoms" or "personal responsibility". Conservative republicans once believed in local control. Local control doesn't mean passing a state law that takes control from cities and local school districts. More hypocrisy. Personal responsibility? Well, that's a joke. We have seen how personally responsible people are since March 2020.
Will your kids get sick from COVID? The Iowa governor doesn't think so. I must have missed the MD after her name or her specialty training in epidemiology. Those in the Iowa Department of Public Health who do have that knowledge are kept quiet to keep the misinformation machine going. 300 kids in Mississippi are hospitalized and 10 have died. If you think, "10 out of 300 is low", you are reprehensible. 10 CHILDREN. 10 young ones who were supposed to have their entire lives ahead of them. 10 families who have to bury a child. Is that who we are? Is that who we've become? Are we all the ignorant Marjorie Taylor Greene who says, "were all going to die some day"? We should be better than that. We have solid proof that we aren't. Good luck justifying that with being a Christian. I don't see "love one another" in comments like that. I see, "I take care of me and mine, f*** you and yours". So much for WWJD.