Currently, my 4-year-old daughter cannot attend school if she has a fever or any symptoms of COVID-19 without a negative recent test result. This means that every time she has a cough or runny nose, she has to miss school for at least a day (since it’s not always easy to get a rapid test, and insurance-covered, doctor-administered test results can often take one day or more to come in). Three weeks into the academic school year, my child has already had to miss one day of school for a cold, but because I was working from home, I could park her in her room with meds and the TV on and work my full day without much disruption to my routine. I imagine that in the winter, with colds and other respiratory illnesses flying around, more days of school will likely be missed due to illness and the rigid COVID-19 protocols in public schools, and if I’m teaching in-person, what then?

According to the DOE rules, a child who tests positive for COVID-19 must quarantine for ten days. If a child is a close contact of a student who tests positive, that child must also quarantine for ten days. Recently, the DOE updated its policies to reflect a change in the CDC definition to a close contact where if a student was fully masked while in close indoor proximity to a positive case, then the fully masked student is not considered a close contact and does not need to quarantine if symptom-free.​ This does not apply to children in 3K and 4K, however, because they remove their masks to eat lunch and to nap indoors in the classroom. If my daughter tests positive, or if a child in her class tests positive, she will likely need to quarantine for ten days.

When we are talking about accommodations for parents of young children, we are talking about a temporary situation–a stop-gap measure–that will likely only affect the Spring 2022 term. Just a bit more flexibility in the definition of hybrid classes (which could be used to meet the 70% in-person goal) and/or granting greater allowances for faculty to be able to teach fully online could be used to equitably address the unusual hurdles that parents of young children currently face. At least if I were teaching a hybrid class, I could take my class online for the ten days that my child may be required to quarantine since I cannot realistically expect any babysitter (or my own elderly, immunocompromised parents) to watch her if she is herself positive or has a suspected case of COVID-19. 

I have put an extraordinary amount of effort in the past year in developing my online pedagogy and completing online trainings a year before the pandemic had even occurred. I came into remote education in a position of strength with respect to online pedagogy and my time has since been spent in continuing to make gradual improvements to enhance my students’ experience. There is no reason why my students would not be served by my teaching online or hybrid next term. I don’t see the pedagogical value in my being required to teach at least one course in-person next semester in its current limited definition while I am under the current constraints imposed by the vaccine’s inaccessibility for young children. The thought that my courses will have to sit unused in Blackboard in Spring 2022 when there is a demonstrable need for me and for many students to have online instruction available is, frankly, frustrating and nerve-wracking. It gives the impression that parents of children who are not yet eligible for the vaccine have been wholly forgotten and left behind in the collective pull to move past the pandemic. 

Yet, we know that for the unvaccinated, and that means children, the pandemic is still ongoing. Furthermore, denying greater access to online courses may not serve our college’s student population, which also includes many parents of young children in daycare, and 3K and 4K programs, for whom COVID-19 quarantine protocols would also apply. Cutting down on online course offerings feels very much like telling student parents that their options are to gamble on lost tuition, by signing up for in-person courses they may not be able to complete because of competing childcare responsibilities, or to delay their education until their children can be vaccinated and kept in school. Ultimately, I’d just like to continue to be very effective at my job. By teaching online or hybrid in the Spring, I would be poised to continue to provide quality service to students, the department, college, and university without contributing to unexpected schedule disruptions that would undoubtedly interfere with students’ learning and overall college experience. I personally have no desire to continue to work permanently in virtual land. When my child is vaccinated, I am very happy to teach a schedule that incorporates more in-person teaching. What I’m articulating is simply the need for a temporary accommodation for those of us who have small children who are still unprotected for COVID-19, and are, furthermore, susceptible to all of the uncertainties that come with that.