Being a parent is wildly arduous. Usually.

In the age of COVID, it’s a 24/7 internal scream. This is certainly true for all parents in our district schools.

We reached out to several local parents, and a couple students, and asked: How is your school faring with COVID-related matters? The answers all center, as you may imagine, on worry and concern… and dissatisfaction.

One parent told us that a student in her child’s fourth-grade class tested positive for COVID on the second day of school. She didn’t learn this from the school, she said, but from a fellow parent whose child had been exposed. She waited to hear from the school concerning the exposure, wanting to know when it happened and the next precautionary steps. That call never came.

For most schools, the policy appears to be to inform only those fellow students who are in “close contact” with a positive case. That excludes kids within three feet of a positive student when they are both wearing a “well-fitting” mask.

In the aforementioned case, the children who were deemed exposed or in “close contact” remained in the classroom for the rest of the school day. This begs the question: if they are compelled to quarantine for 10 days, shouldn’t that start right away?

And therein lies a major issue strung through the entirety of our unofficial poll — communication or, really, the lack thereof. Parents far and wide want schools to do better in that regard, and that’s putting it mildly.

“Communication is horrific,” said one parent.

Another parent said she will probably pull her child from school. “I’m a cancer patient and I just don’t feel like I can absorb this risk,” she said.

Indeed, there is no remote option this year in any area school. And for many households where both parents work, remote still wouldn’t be feasible. And some kids flourish on their own while others labor to stay connected; there is no one-size-fits-all answer.

“Children need to be in school,” said another parent. “Once they allowed them back, my son’s grades flourished and he was a happier kid.”

Many parents voiced their intense frustration that they weren’t even given a choice. Some pulled their kids from school and either homeschooled, or sought alternate/private schools, like the Bruderhof Community or High Meadow in Stone Ridge.

And of course, the bus situation has been rife with problems. The worst locally was in Pine Bush, where they had to cancel school for a few days because of lack of drivers (See our story on page 1). Restructuring has taken place in many of our local schools, often leading to merged bus routes and more kids on each bus (See the Rondout story on page 9).

One parent crunched some numbers while we chatted: Our population is 181,851 in Ulster County (according to the 2020 census). As of today, there are 697 active cases in the county. That means that 1 in every 260 people in our county is currently a confirmed active case.

While the math isn’t perfect because the case counts fluctuate, the gist remains true — the odds of a faculty/staff member having COVID are higher than the general population due to greater exposure.

Some parents wish daily temperature checks at the school would come back. Many begged the district to use outdoor spaces more frequently. Another parent talked about the “tremendous anxiety” that his son feels at lunchtime, with masks off and, reportedly, only one chair between kids in the cafeteria. Meanwhile, high school students in the Rondout Valley district are encouraged to eat outside in “Gander Garden” — a series of tents and tables set up next to their sports field.

Students also report everyday confusion with rules constantly changing. One Ellenville High School student said her temperature was checked the first day, then never again. The collection of COVID questionnaires is reportedly inconsistent and not followed up upon.

Many parents and students also mentioned that the hallways in the high school are packed with kids, practicing very little distancing, and little to no enforcement seen by teachers or other staff. Older kids appear to be better at wearing their masks than younger kids, at least. As one student said, “If you take it off in class, you will be told to put it back on.”

So here we are, trying to be good parents. We love our kids and want to keep them safe, despite the veritable minefield of problems — communication failures, a lack of alternatives for people who need them, and general unrest. Ultimately, we know school are struggling to try to keep up with state and federal changes, but any amount of COVID mitigation is useless if not directly communicated to the parents and the students.