Sahina Islam’s daughters – 7-year-old twins and 4-year-olds attending PS 24 in Flushing – will usually cheerfully look forward to starting new classes and throwing themselves into their favorite arts and music classes in the fall, but they I don’t want to take risks.
The 30-year-old biochemist who is now a housewife joins more and more parents who are rethinking their strategies at school until a safe and proven vaccine is found for coronaviruses.
Even if Governor Andrew Cuomo reopens schools as expected in September, Islam will not return its girls to PS 24, instead choosing to teach their own children after enrolling them in homeschooling.
“It seems the safest thing to do until the vaccine comes out and is proven effective for children,” he told The Post. “With the level of infection and the ability of people to get infected again, we don’t want to take risks.”
Islam and her husband, Dr. Choudhury Hasan, 34, a frontline doctor, even has plans to build a swimming pool in their backyard so they can more easily examine the physical education component of homeschooling.
Legal requirements for homeschooling varies from country to country, but in New York, among other strict rules, parents must notify their school district supervisors, prepare and submit individual instruction plans, and submit quarterly progress reports.
In comparison, New Jersey takes an easier approach. Those who make their children not go to school must give “equal instructions,” but there are no rules regarding parental qualifications, time spent on teaching, examinations or bookkeeping.
Asha Abraham, 43, from Old Bridge, NJ, is another parent who is seriously considering looking after his son, Nathanial, 13, and 11-year-old Daniel, far from Carl Sandburg MS in the city until vaccines are available.
“How do you prevent infection in an environment near a school?” said Abraham, owner of a Manhattan-based cyber security firm that hopes to handle the demands of his job with homeschooling. “We are from South India, where there is a great emphasis on academics and education. But I prefer my children to live than to be educated at this time. “
Abraham and her husband, Thomas, 46, are very worried about the latest news about the spread of mysterious conditions such as Kawasaki that affect children. This is known as multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, or MIS-C, and has been linked to coronavirus.
“It’s frightening because they are still finding out what’s happening with it,” said Abraham, who noted that his two sons have allergies and asthma and “are considered at high risk for COVID-19.”
Epidemiologist Kumi Smith, from the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota, agrees there is uncertainty about MIS-C, but shows that conditions are rare.
“Although there are reports of quite severe illness among children associated with COVID-19, morbidity is really a low number,” the expert said.
As for parents considering homeschooling, Smith sounds a warning tone.
“Children’s safety is important,” he said, “but you also have to balance it with family well-being, mental health, and the ability of parents who work to do many tasks.”
That’s very important because FDA approval of vaccines can be very far.
“Even the 12 to 18 month timeline is accelerated and unprecedented,” Smith said.
He knew it was not a panacea, but the vaccine would do a lot to quell the fear of Ceceilia Parnther, from Jamaica, Queens, who was also considering going to school at the home of her older daughters, Leila, 10, and 8-year-old Maya.
“I cannot help but worry about the critical mass of children in Leila and Maya schools, because there is a high student ratio to teachers,” said the 39-year-old assistant professor, who also has a 2-year-old age. old man named Norah.
Ceceilia and Anthony Parnther with their daughters, Leila, Maya and Norah.Polaris
Together with her husband’s engineer, Anthony, 40, Parnther has researched school options at home as an alternative to sending their older girls back to PS 131 in Jamaica Hills for the new academic year.
For him, the ideal solution could be a “hybrid model” of education in which some classes are taught directly and others use the same distance learning plan used since New York City schools closed on March 17.
“There might be some kind of compromise, with a staggered start time and other efforts to reduce numbers in the classroom,” Parnther suggested.
Indeed, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week issued guidelines for schools reopening, which includes wearing masks, closing playgrounds and having one-way signs in the halls to allow for some measure of social distance.
But Parnther could not imagine how the guidelines could be applied effectively, “especially in high-density schools like my children.”
However, for many parents, the thought of home-schooling until vaccines are available is anathema.
Among them was White Plains, a businesswoman who lives in NY, Kristen Ritvanen, who wants to see her three children back inside the four walls of the school this fall.
“I am not interested in educating them at home if they have the opportunity to return [when] the reopening of the school was approved [on] and approved by the government and health officials, “said the 51-year-old man.
He claims his older son, Sean, 18, and his 16-year-old daughter, Shannon, need to attend physical locations for their “mental, physical and social health”. Meanwhile, his 3½-year-old son, Zane, who has an individualized education plan, requires face-to-face interactions for sessions such as talk therapy and occupational therapy.
But he did not blame parents like Parnther, Abraham, and Islam for their plans to go home to school this September.
“I’m not a person who rushes back to normal,” said Ritvanen. “I appreciate that it is a personal choice.”
