Alan Borsuk: Parents, you may need a break. But this summer is critical in getting your children back on track in school

Alan J. Borsuk
Special to the Journal Sentinel

Congratulations, parents.

You’ve reached the end of a stressful, draining year. Those of you who have kept things on track at home when it comes to furthering your child’s education deserve great applause. Those of you who weren’t so good at being teachers, co-teachers, teachers’ aides or whatever was called on within your home deserve great sympathy.

Alan J. Borsuk

It’s time to ask yourself two questions: What did your kids learn this year? And what did you learn?  

The first question is important because, more than ever, you became central to assessing how your child was doing. In many cases, teachers were able to give you input. In many cases, they probably didn’t provide as much useful input as usual. Amid virtual classrooms, hybrid schedules, social distancing, masking, constrained life even within school buildings and awkward ways of giving tests, who could really assess progress?  

Parental choice in education has been a big and controversial subject for many years, but, wow, this year pioneered new ground. For many of you, aspects of the impact are not going to go away just because the coming school year is looking more normal. The opportunity – maybe even the need – for you to play a bigger role in guiding your child’s education is going to remain.   

Let’s talk about a few specific choices on the agenda for parents.  

The summer: Every summer is important for kids, but for many, that is especially true now. Yes, kids (and parents and teachers) need time to unwind and have fun. But using the summer to make up ground for what didn’t occur in the last 15 months is somewhere between valuable and urgent, depending on your kid. Many schools and districts are offering more and better opportunities. Milwaukee Public Schools reports that sign-ups for summer are much higher than in prior years. I hope kids show up – and that’s one place where parental work is key.  

Reading: Making reading in any and all forms a part of the summer (and beyond) is central to getting your child on the best track out of the pandemic. Schools, libraries and community organizations are offering reading programs and opportunities, generally for free. It’s on parents to lead the way for kids on this front.  

Summer reading may be key for children following a challenging year.

Tutoring and counseling: What does your child need at this point? This includes both academics and social-emotional needs. If your child needs extra help, seek it. If done well, such help will be a big help going into the next school year. Does your school offer such help or can it point you to help?  

Vaccinating your child – and yourself: Vaccines are available for older kids. By the end of the summer, they may be available for younger kids. And what about you? You want to set your child up for the smoothest return to school? A household where everyone who is eligible has gotten vaccinations will be a big step toward that.   

Home life in general: If the school environment has not been what it would have been in a normal year, the same is almost surely true at home. How have you been doing at creating the best possible home environment for your child? What’s ahead for that? The pandemic has underscored the fact that home life plays an enormous role in shaping a child’s personal life and academic life. If your home is a stable, kind, good-natured place where curiosity about the world is cultivated, you’re helping your kid.   

The fall: This is the biggest matter. In many cases, parents will have more options and more decisions than in the past. Your local schools, public and private, really want you (and may well need you) to choose them for the fall.  

In Milwaukee, as well as statewide and nationwide, large numbers of parents kept their young children at home this past year rather than sending them to kindergarten or first grade. Where are all these kids going to be in the fall? Back to where they would have been in past circumstances or in some other school or being home-schooled or virtually schooled? A really important matter, both individually and in the bigger picture of the school landscape.  

There are clearly a large number of parents who want to have five-day-a-week in-person classes – and a smaller but significant number who want to stick with virtual schooling. How will this play out? Do you remain worried about health safety in a school building or are you going to object if your child’s school continues to impose masking and social distancing rules? In either case, how will this affect your plans?   

Is your child one of the many – maybe a quarter to a third of all kids in some communities – who pretty much disappeared from the system this year? If so, what will be the case, come the fall? 

Beyond the control of individual parents, will anything be done to address the pretty clear picture of how the equity and opportunity gaps in education increased during the pandemic? In broad strokes, the “haves” got better education this past year than the “have-nots.” What does that call for ahead, including what will happen in the case of MPS and the huge amount of federal money it is getting to address just such matters.  

Overall, parents have a different set of cards in their hands now than in the past. Some of those cards are kind of attractive. Some are not. But they all need to be played wisely.  

One thing the pandemic period has underscored is that what you do as parents really matters – probably more so now than at any other time in your child’s life. 

Alan J. Borsuk is senior fellow in law and public policy at Marquette Law School. Reach him at alan.borsuk@marquette.edu.