Want kids back in school? You’re criticized no matter where you land on the issue

I have never needed winter break as much as I needed it this year.

After 3-1/2 months of being teacher-mom, my brain is tired and my spirit is worn. I think my expectations are around here somewhere but they’ve gotten so low I often can’t seem to find them. By the time this piece is published, we will have started back on the COVID-19 schooling hamster wheel.

When I was a relatively new parent, my therapist at the time counseled me, “No matter what you do as a parent, you will be judged.” Her point was: This is how it is, learn to roll with it, and move on. I am now 10 years into parenting, and this has been some of the most sage advice I have ever received. The Mommy Wars are real. My parenting is and will continue to be judged, but my job is to breathe and move on.

The coronavirus pandemic has created a new season of the Mommy Wars, COVID Schooling Edition. The larger school districts in Thurston County remain closed to most students, with the majority of kids learning online. Our family has had the privilege to choose to homeschool. For us, this is a short-term solution; we plan to re-enroll our kids once schools are back in person.

In tracking the conversations about local schools reopening, I find myself continuously frustrated with the conversations among parents. False narratives are brewing on both sides of the opening schools debate. If you want kids in school, you don’t care about the teachers, staff, and elderly family members who might get sick and die. If you want kids at home, you don’t care about the families who are struggling, the single parents who need to work, or the kids for whom schools provide a much-needed social safety net.

Neither of these things are true. The truth is, the vast majority of parents care about the health of their friends, their family, and the greater community. Some people believe that kids going back to school won’t negatively impact these things. Some people believe that kids going back to school will negatively impact these things. There is good intent behind both perspectives.

Many parents seem to be so caught up with judging and shaming one another for their differing opinions and methods of navigating the crisis that collectively we’ve lost sight of the shared goal of getting kids back to in-person learning. And absent from many of these conversations are the voices of teachers and staff — people who are, of course, essential to schools opening. The views of parents may be moot, if teachers are sick, quarantining, or decide to retire.

Parents interested in schools reopening should be focusing on what the school districts will need in terms of vaccine requirements, building upgrades, personal protective equipment, support for teachers, transportation — all of the things needed to actually send our entire community back to in-person learning.

Too often in community conversations people have the same goal, yet get bogged down in their differing ideas of how to get there. They can’t see the forest through the trees, they lose sight of all they have in common, and they end up shooting themselves in the foot. We all care about kids, families, communities — let’s start from that place.

Whitney Bowerman is a member of The Olympian’s 2020 Board of Contributors. She can be reached at whitneybowermanboc@gmail.com

This story was originally published January 8, 2021 at 5:45 AM.