Us Educational System & Significance Of Extra-curricular Activities

In my state its not going down and we are in 3rd stage of reopening
My state is democratic but my county is super super Republic. Before the governor said face mask is a must in public. Our county had declared that there was no need for masks anymore!! just during 2 nd stage of reopening.

With all that going my kid got into a charter school through lottery he is in TK, and the charter school is very careful. But I will be in a pickle if his school is online and my husband and I have to go to work.
I am at work today. My husband is still WFH, he might be till SEPT.

But but but he won't be able to help my kid to do online studies, even though he is at home.

My kid's old school- is starting in Aug as well, with a drop off drop in just outside the school, with no school lunch+snacks.

Last year my kid was sick literally once a month. So even if the school starts or not I am in serious trouble for 2020.
I might even have to stop my work or look for companies that support WFH.

 

I have a friend whose one kid is in college and another one is 9 yr old who is with my kid in the same grade, they are one of the wealthiest families around. The college kid got full ride scholarship (not the financial one of course), she did good on academics, extra curriculars and classical dance. She is an extrovert, involved in notable activities for the community as well. Their mom said, her kids do 6-7 activities a week - swimming, dance, music, piano, kumon (or something like this) for reading, extra math classes and badminton or another sport. I guess it depends on the capacity and readiness of the child to work through the school life. Where I live, there is a huge indian community and everyone is so aggressive and it is a race to get kids involved in these activities and academic stuff. It also depends on what kid's interests are and how much time working parents have to take them around for all these. For my kid, we are doing few things that she likes, but not more than 3 activities. I dont make her take extra classes for reading or math, she is just above average and I think she will pick it up. It will be too much pressure and less family time if we add a lot of activities, IMO.

With COVID-19 looming around longer, our school district will most probably have online classes for fall. DH is working from home until next spring, but he wont he able to help her with studies, but I think we will be able to keep her schedule. Their school encourages independent learning a lot and gives them work that can be completed with out much effort from parents. DD is pretty good in being responsible, so that helps a lot. But overall the quality of learning, I am not sure. But we do not have a choice.

 

The problem is that daycares have become even more strict now, with good reason. The slightest hint of cold, cough, temperature and the kid has to remain at home and sometimes even get a doctors note to come back. Many of my friends are doing shifts now with both parents, to take care of work and online learning for kids. It’s not pretty.

 

What do you mean not the financial one? I always thought full-ride scholarship is the full college tuition that is paid.

Wow! that's impressive for her to do all of that and impressive on parents part who support her. Parents who are dedicated in children's life is how children succeed.

 

oh god! immigrants life sucks so bad, with no family and every time my kid cough if I have to keep him it will be the end of my career.

 

Some colleges have financial aid (you have to have good academics & extra curriculars, and parents have income less than certain amount), I do not know the details, there are a lot of scholarships and financial aids for college. Also, depends on where your kid goes to college, there is in-state and out of state tuitions waived or not waived etc. depends on the University, i believe. I have limited information on these!!

My friend is in IT with very flexible schedule, works from home 3 days a week and on days she goes to office she is back by 3.30. Her husband work from home all the time. This is regardless of COVID-19.

Also, they have house maid and help in and around the house. That helps a lot with their schedules.

 

Thanks, Angela for sharing. Being first-gen immigrants, it's like learning everything from scratch in this country.

I have noticed that if parents are WFH regardless of this COVID situation, they might a bit more control over children's schedule and paying attention to kids.
That's one of the major reasons I am on the lookout for WFH companies.

 

@blindpup10 Colleges have merit-based as well as need-based aid packages. You can get the former even if you have a comfortable family income if the kid is bright and brings a unique package to the table: sports, extracurricular, community service etc in addition to academics.

 

We are fortunate, we don't have a high infection rate. Our Governor has been great, he closed all businesses in mid-March and that would have helped a lot if people weren't stupid. We are in Phase II of opening and restaurants are already filled and only about 40% of people wear masks. We were allowed to open our research labs in mid-April and have been opened with reduced capacity since May first week. My university is planning to go in flex-hybrid in fall. All summer classes are online.
I can work from home- I decided to buy-out fall teaching and DH asked for online teaching instead of in-person but it's really hard to focus and get work done at home especially when kids are home. We are planning for the worse (online school for kids in fall) and hoping for the best (some sort of school opening, even if it is 2 days a week).
We are fortunate to have this flexibility. I wasn't planning to stop the tenure clock but if we can't work full time in fall, I might have to rethink.

 

This is a tough situation. Ours reopened in May first week and had lock down only for 6 weeks probably. We are having huge spikes in numbers now. We are bracing for online school for Fall which is very much the only possibility now. Good or bad thing is I will be home too from September last week for maternity leave!