Communities and their schools experienced the pandemic differently . Students in districts with higher average incomes had parents who could work from home (yes – this was terrible and hard – but actually an incredible privilege), were less likely to be exposed, more likely to have high quality healthcare, less likely to lose a loved one to COVID. Their counterparts in lower-income districts had more COVID exposures, a higher rate of positive tests, lower quality healthcare, parents working in forward facing, in-person professions, parents who lost their jobs, and were more likely to experience COVID loss and trauma.
If you fall into the first category, please recognize that the challenges that you faced in the pandemic were quite different from those other communities faced. As challenging as this has been – things were demonstrably worse in communities just stone’s throw away. It’s a strange idea that for some of us – the very real challenges we faced were “easy” compared to the average pandemic parenting experience – but there it is.
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