Proposing a New School Calendar for the Age of COVID

There is a noise that, these past two years, has acquired the power to turn my blood to ice: my child’s sneeze, followed by a wet sniffle.

Is it a cold? Will his nose be so drippy that it saturates the mask that he’s expected to wear in school all day? Or worse: Does he have a fever? A sore throat? Either way, he’ll need a PCR test before he can return to the classroom. How many meetings will need to be rescheduled, plans unmade, episodes of Wild Kratts endured in the days before the result arrives? And, sweet Jesus, that’s assuming it’s negative. If COVID is lurking behind that unassuming sniffle, stick a fork in me.

Since the spring of 2020, parents of young children have been on a roller-coaster ride, and not the Space Mountain kind. The rickety kind you’re not, like the flu, meaning that case counts could rise in colder months for years to come and the winter could continue to be an attendance train wreck for schools. Particularly for the many American families in which both parents are employed, this would be a nightmare scenario.