While schools are closed: educating children during a pandemic costs families thousands of dollars - ForumDaily
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While schools are closed: educating children during a pandemic costs families thousands of dollars

A private school was never part of Colby Shire's plans when she and her husband started a family: such training is too expensive, writes CNN... So the couple bought a home in a nice public school neighborhood in York, Pennsylvania where class sizes were small. But then 2020 happened.

Photo: Shutterstock

This summer, amid the chaos and confusion surrounding school opening due to the pandemic, Shire and her husband changed their daughter's education plan three times.

At the public school, they were told that their five-year-old daughter could attend face-to-face classes two days a week and spend three days at home studying online, or she could just stay at home all week and attend remote classes. If parents had opted for the hybrid preschool curriculum (taking their daughter to school on the three days she was out of school), it would have cost $ 775 a month. Another option was a private school in the same area, which offered classes five days a week from 9:00 am to 15:00 pm for $ 839 a month.

The couple, who work full-time, chose a private school because they offered their child the most consistent learning plan and minimized the daily problems for parents.

“We are not rich and could use this money to pay off our debts,” Shear said.

Even if public schools are open full-time at some point during the school year, Shire said she plans to keep her daughter in a private school.

“We wanted to make sure she was getting a really good experience ... So let's spend the money and sort it out next year.”

Across the country, many public schools close for the entire school week due to social distancing protocols. Without reliable guidance from government and school officials, parents had to choose from a variety of impromptu, costly educational programs for their children.

On the subject: Many US parents do not know they are eligible for benefits while their children are at home

Organization of first grade home education

New Yorker Anthony Andino and his wife have a 6-year-old daughter who enters the first grade of public school. They, too, were given a choice: either to leave her at home permanently, or to let her attend classes in person several days a week. They decided to leave her at home.

Andino, who recently lost his hospitality job due to the pandemic, will be home to help the girl with online education while his wife works full-time at a local small business.

While Andino plans to oversee the learning at home himself, he said he has invested $ 1300 in new equipment and supplies for first grade students who are in-class. He gave her a new table and markers, crayons, scissors and other materials for the semester, and an iPad for remote lessons. Andino estimated that if it had been a normal school year, he would have spent less than a third of the $ 1300 on her school supplies.

Online lessons in preschool

Anne Brewer's 8-year-old son entered third grade in Chico, California a few weeks ago, but his public school does not offer face-to-face classes. Since the woman and her husband do not work from home and have no close relatives to look after the children, their son attends remote lessons at a preschool at the local church, where the boy goes to a group with about 10 children from different classes and schools.

Brewer said she chose the preschool because at $ 520 a month, it's cheaper than a $ 775 equivalent offered by the City Department of Parks and Recreation. Ironically, this option would take the children to the gym in the same school building, where face-to-face classes are not allowed.

“It would be funny if it weren’t so sad,” Brewer said.

The church preschool allows her to pick up her son early enough so that she can get to work on time. According to her, the boy starts his day with three hours of classes in Zoom, and then completes the tasks on his own. At home, in the evenings, Brewer and her husband work to help the child with tasks that he could not complete during the day.

Brewer says her monthly school bill is now about $ 335 more than what she paid before the pandemic. This is money that would otherwise go towards college and retirement savings or mortgage payments, she said.

"Pandemic capsule" in the garage

Rajeshree Shah and her husband, who live in Orange County, California, are lucky because they have jobs that allow them to complete tasks from home. But as Shah discovered this spring, that still didn't give her enough room to adequately supervise her two daughters' online learning from home. One is in the fourth grade, the other is in the second, and both are in public school.

“I couldn’t give the children the attention they needed. My eldest daughter asked for help with her homework. I said I was on the phone and would be free in 10 minutes. But I was released after 2 hours,” explains the woman. “And my youngest daughter wouldn’t do her homework if I didn’t help her.”

The Shah and her husband decided that instead of allowing their daughters to attend classes in public in public schools, they would pay a tutor to run a pandemic capsule for their friends' daughters and children in the family's garage.

The couple painted their garage purple and yellow (they are big Lakers fans), bought new desks and made a sign that read Shah Family Elementary School because they wanted to create a fun atmosphere for the kids during such a difficult time. Setting up the garage cost about $ 900. The family also pays $ 2000 a month for both their daughters' participation in the group and some of the private hours their children work with a tutor.

While $2000 is a lot, it is only $200 a month more than the couple spent pre-pandemic, not including the cost of after-school care and a nanny who also helps with the couple's household chores, Shah said. This extra money would go towards savings.

On the subject: Advantages and Disadvantages of Homeschooling in the USA: The Experience of Our Immigrants

For the lucky few, the employer compensates for the costs

Some parents are lucky with employers willing to subsidize the high cost of distance learning.

“We decided to offer this subsidy for one simple reason,” said Ellyn Shook, a company executive and human resources officer at Accenture. “Our staff with school-aged children did not feel they had the support they needed to balance their parenting responsibilities with work.”

Through a new Employer Benefit Program created by child care provider Bright Horizons in partnership with education centers nationwide, Accenture pays the lion's share of the cost for employees who enroll school-age children in learning support programs in places like Code Ninjas. Mathnasium and Sylvan Learning Centers. The parents' own expenses for the child are only $ 5 per hour. Observers are usually there to support the children during the online lessons, but they do not teach the curriculum.

Other employers also offer tuition subsidies at places like Bright Horizons or Varsity Tutors. For example, Varsity Tutors now offers 25% to 50% discounts on tutoring and training for about 50 organizations, said Chief Scientist Brian Galvin.

Tutoring services typically cost $ 60 an hour, he said, but subsidized parents can pay between $ 30 and $ 45 an hour for one-to-one tutoring, and much less if their child is in a group of five children in the same class with a single tutor.

Read also on ForumDaily:

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Miscellanea In the U.S. education in the USA school closing online training
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