Covid Quarantines at Schools & Impoverished Families

Hey, all. I want to ask someone who has a better understanding of education and health policy and the legality of childcare because I am just now beginning to research it:

How is it even LEGAL and ALLOWED that schools in low income communities can just say "hey, we're going virtual now, so have your kid on Google Classroom tomorrow morning at 9"?

How are school districts allowed to just cancel school on a dime without legally needing to work in partnership with daycares, healthcare locations, or food banks/housing assistance?

How are we allowed to do this to families who now have to decide between getting their kid on virtual school or keeping their heat or electric on? Or being able to afford Thanksgiving dinner, or Christmas presents? I am so fired up, and I feel so helpless. I want to help and I have no idea what to do.

Story time:
I am a kindergarten teacher in Chicago, in a charter school network on the south side. We had to switch from in-person to remote school on Thursday; parents were given less than 24 hours' notice to get childcare. A single mom was crying at computer pick-up, saying she can't miss 14 days of work to quarantine and daycare won't take her daughter because she has been exposed. She looked absolutely broken and said she didn't even want the computer and she may have to unenroll her kid, I went to tell my principal, and she coldly said: "I sympathize as a working mom, too, but she needs to get her vaccinated." Even my kids who have gotten their FIRST shot have to quarantine. This solves NOTHING of this mom's current problem. Another admin said, "well, most of quarantine is actually during Thanksgiving break, so she needed to have a childcare plan in place anyway." --- Well, no, because that daycare won't take her anymore, having been exposed. I am just at a complete loss for words.

Can someone explain the legality of all of this? Obviously, my own admin won't. Am I just pie in the sky delusional about what schools owe their communities? I am aware that school isn't daycare, but in our country -- it sort of is at this point. It IS a given, secure, often FREE place to put your kid while working class parents struggle to make ends meet. A place that you know they are fed, warm, and safe.

Submitted November 20, 2021 at 08:11AM by lunarlyplutonic https://ift.tt/2Z7y6uH