Federal leaders must do their homework on sending kids back to school

As I lie here on oxygen watching the number of COVID cases in most states rise to record-breaking levels, I am baffled by the decision of our federal leaders to send our children back to school.

Six months into our nation's battle with COVID-19, we have no coordinated federal response. The virus is less contained in our communities than it was when schools closed last spring.

COVID is proving to be more virulent in young people than originally thought. It is showing to have prolonged or even chronic, permanent health care conditions for many who get it.

Even with growing evidence that COVID-19 can remain airborne for hours and the scientific community stressing the importance and efficacy of wearing masks to thwart its spread, we still don't have a national mandate or citizen buy-in to wear masks in public, yet we expect our educators and children to comply and wear them for six hours at a time in a classroom. How?

My whole family has now battled COVID. My husband first, then my kids and now me. My husband has residual symptoms and is now considered a long hauler. My children continue to have low-grade fevers on and off, two months out. Their temps are rarely over 100, but 99.8 and 99.7 are not uncommon. Do I send them to school on those days? Our district policy says yes. But there is new evidence showing that individuals can get COVID, recover and then show positive again weeks or months later. If this is due to reinfection or a resurgence of the old infection is yet to be known. Would you want my kids sitting next to your kids at school? On the bus? In choir practice?

My daughter desperately wants to return to the classroom and play with her friends again. She wants to go to school. But she also wants to protect her teachers and classmates from getting sick. She knows how scary it is. Her father was in the hospital last month. Her mom has been on oxygen for four weeks. She was on breathing treatments and both she and her brother required ER visits. There are hundreds more like us right here in our community who have battled the virus. We got lucky. We survived. But the jury is still out on what that means for our ongoing long-term health, and yours.

I'm currently in a position where I don't have to work. I am able to support my kids in distant learning, and our school district has ample resources. They have chosen to stray from Betsy DuVos's mandate and have given families the option of online or classroom learning. Many other families and districts aren't so fortunate. Too many districts are underfunded, especially in poorer communities and communities of color where, coincidently, COVID mortality rates are highest. They do not have the resources to provide online learning.

In many communities around this great country, the choice between going hungry and homeless or dying of COVID is real. Those living paycheck to paycheck need to work now to survive and they need child care to do so. What's more, our essential workers who stock our shelves, heal our sick and keep our communities safe need child care too. The U.S. has not invested in a government subsidized child-care program; the financial burden falls on individual families. It is estimated that the average U.S. couple spend 25.6% of their income on child-care costs and it's 52.7% for a single parent. Conversely, Danish couples spend only 10% of their income, only 2% for a single parent. South Korean parents spend only 4%. The American public school system has become essential in providing child care to families. With cost in mind, has anyone in power calculated the hidden costs of sending our children to school during the current crisis or done a thorough risk-benefit analysis to determine if it is indeed socially responsible to do so?

Without an adequate social safety net, many districts and families cannot afford to make socially responsible decisions. What's more, current guidelines and lawmakers aren't taking into account the evolving scientific evidence and therefore don't require them to. But I ask, can our society afford us not to make socially responsible decisions right now? If we as a nation, lead our educators and young citizens to a path of death or a potential lifelong debilitating disease, how will our society ever recover economically, or mentally for that matter?

What's more, if our government and our tax dollars are not serving as the vital bridge to fill that gap between individual and societal needs, especially during a global pandemic, it begs the question: What and whom, pray tell, are our current government and tax dollars serving?

• Alix Atwell, of Barrington, was the author of a three-part Daily Herald series on her and her family's experience with COVID-19