Reduced hours, split schedules, smaller classes, temperature checks, students sitting 6 feet apart. According to education officials across the nation, this is what school could look like in the fall if America’s children return. But lost in the discussion of reopening is a factor that often gets left out of school policy decision-making.

Parents.

Let’s start with reduced hours or split schedules, meaning that some students would attend school certain days of the week and other students would attend the other days of the week. My father recently talked to me about this idea to get my take on it as an educator. But I was much more concerned about it as a parent. This may reduce the number of students in classes, thus reducing contact between students and their teachers. But who will watch my grade school-aged children on their days out of school?

If parents go back to work full time, but their child can only go to school part time, who will take care of the children? In order for reduced hours or split schedules to work, the same must be true of parents’ workplaces. This may seem like an obvious point, but American school schedules have somehow remained stagnant despite a working population that hasn’t.

Think about it. The average U.S. school day hovers around seven hours, two hours less than the average parent’s work day. And although American parents work 12 months a year, our children attend school for 10 months, thanks to a decision that has held firm since the late 19th century. Despite a vast amount of research showing learning loss due to the extended summer vacation, we continue to operate on a schedule that contributes to inequities and to parents organizing expensive summer child care.

Among married couples with children, 64% were partners who both worked, according to 2019 figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is a significant change from a century ago, when the majority of husbands worked while wives didn’t. Yet we continue to educate our children on schedules of yesteryear that perpetuated a male dominant workforce.

America is not alone in this, just as it isn’t alone in COVID-19. Recently, in Italy, where COVID-19 devastated lives in the outbreak’s earliest months, about 4 million adults have returned to their workplaces. But schools, day care centers and camps have remained closed. According to The New York Times, the Italian government has done little to support parents at this time, offering up 15 additional days of parental leave and around 600 euros ($650) for child care funds. Schools aren’t expected to open up until September.

In the U.S., little is being discussed about support from workplaces or the government if staggered schedules should occur or remote learning should resume in the fall. Millions of Americans have lost jobs, taken pay cuts and are trying to endure a pandemic with only a one-time $1,200 stimulus check.

Child care for children younger than kindergarten age is even more dire. The child care industry asked for $50 billion in stimulus funds to stay afloat, yet it received only $3.5 billion from the CARES Act. With child care already expensive, how will parents pay for it with less money in their pockets and fewer providers in their neighborhoods?

As states make school reopening decisions, they must take into account parents, their workplaces and their choices for child care. States must work with companies and organizations to enact flexible policies for parents to reenter the workplace and be home for their children if split school schedules are the norm. The government should offer and sustain universal child care.

And if the country should ever return to the way it was pre-COVID-19, elected officials, educators and parents should reevaluate summer breaks, the seven-hour school day and the 40-hour workweek in order to serve the working-parent population that dominates family structures today, not the one-parent-at-home households of the distant past.

Gina Caneva is the library media specialist for East Leyden High School in Franklin Park.