PORTLAND, Ore. (CN) --- Seven-year-old Walter Bailey wouldn’t say how he felt about his first day back in person. "He's nervous," explained his older brother Arthur, who Walter talks to most.
Their father, Dave Bailey, watched wistfully on Friday as Walter marched up the front steps of Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary in a socially distanced line with about a dozen other kids in his class.
“This is the first time he’s been away from us in a year,” the elder Bailey said.
Arthur had his first day inside a third grade classroom on Monday. The extrovert of the family, Arthur said he was excited to see friends and teachers in person. His father worried about the absence of the purely social aspects of in-person learning, like lunch and recess.
Hollis, the youngest Bailey brother, has remained in day care except during a two-week stretch when the facility shut down due to an outbreak.
Dave is their primary caretaker while their mother, Amanda Bailey, works as a pediatrician. Dave used up all his leave time caring for a trio of boys suddenly at home this spring and summer. Leave extinguished, he made a choice that many parents have been backed into during the pandemic: he left his job as an IT manager for Multnomah County to provide child care to his kids and shepherd them through online schooling.
“There was just no way to do my job and take care of them at the same time,” Bailey said. “No way.”
Bailey says he understands that, just like families, school administrators and teachers were thrown into the reality of cancelling in-person classes last year, and scrambling to plan the opposite now. Still, it’s a lot to adjust to.
“So much of all this is, ‘Here’s what’s happening, deal with it,’” Bailey said.
For the final weeks of the school year, students will be in their classrooms, learning directly from teachers in the same room --- at least for a couple of hours per day, and assuming their parents agree to send them.
It’s the payoff of a gamble by Oregon Governor Kate Brown. This past December, Brown made Oregon one of the first states to contradict federal guidelines by prioritizing vaccinating teachers ahead of people 65 and older. Brown said her decision was spurred by stories she said she’d heard of 11- and 12-year-old kids attempting suicide. However, a study published last Wednesday by the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that, although the number of U.S. deaths overall rose in 2020, the rate of death by suicide was the lowest since 2015.
Regardless, Brown’s plan was geared toward reopening schools for in-person learning by February. The goal was to open schools quickly, without spending months on planning a new schedule and bus routes, among other time-intensive administrative duties. In some parts of the state, that worked. In Portland, some administrators rushed to overhaul class schedules days before schools reopened.
Portland Public Schools didn’t start reopening until April 1, with the youngest students leading the way. After three-quarters of the year learning via computer from home, all will now have the option of adopting a hybrid approach, where they attend school in person for a couple of hours per day while still learning from home the rest of the time. Students who opt out can remain in distance mode full time.
“Moving into a hybrid model does get us one step closer to a full reopening of school,” Superintendent Guadalupe Guerrero said at a recent special meeting of the Board of Education. “We believe, with everyone’s cooperation, we can return to campuses in a safe manner.”