Kudos to the districts that are finding ways to keep feeding their students after being told they must close schools. Kudos to the districts that are NOT requiring teachers to go in anyway when the students are gone. Kudos to the districts that are letting teachers bring their children to school when the kids’ district closed but mom or dad’s did not. Kudos to the many teachers trying desperately to make online learning work despite a frequent lack of resources, especially those with children at home. Kudos to all the teachers online who are sharing the strategies they have found that seem to be working.

And shame on America’s leaders for letting us get into such a mess. New York has counted over 729 confirmed COVID-19 cases as of today but believes thousands are out there. Still, officials have not closed schools. Evidence suggests those schools have about 114,000 homeless students — an entirely credible number — who can’t do without the hot meals, medical care and even laundry facilities those schools provide. I understand the rationale for not shutting the school doors, but I look at the facts and see those schools becoming sites of disease transmission — sites that will be sending the new coronavirus back into the impoverished, mostly minority areas that “support” those large homeless populations. According to www.advocatesforchildren.org/node/1403, one in ten students in the New York City district and charter schools are homeless, and 85% of these homeless students are black or Hispanic.

Eduhonesty: All those endless, ongoing debates about providing health insurance to all Americans? The lack of sick leave for U.S. workers? Those homeless populations left to manage on their own? Neglect by government leaders at the highest levels appears to have set up a perfect storm in New York, as well as other places where the poor and the sick will go to work, and their children will go to school.

Because we have left them with no other, better options.

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Update: Within a few hours of publishing this, in response to growing pressure, Mayor de Blasio announced New York schools will be closing for at least a month starting Monday. For at least a week, schools will be open to provide take-out breakfast and lunch. Some schools will be kept open as “learning centers” for the children of essential workers — health care workers and others who are essential to basic functioning of the area. They will also be open to homeless children. The city is gearing up to roll out online learning.

We are all in uncharted territory. I appreciate the immensity of the effort underway. To those people who are becoming concerned about the loss of learning that will occur this year, I’d like to say, let it go. It’s time to cancel the spring tests and let it go.

Just as it’s time for universal healthcare, guaranteed sick leave so people don’t have to drag their feverish bodies into school or work, and a concerted attack on homelessness.