Giving Compass' Take:

• Jackie Mader reports on how mothers are sacrificing much of their livelihoods in the wild scramble to address their child's education in the confusion of COVID.

• How are mothers in marginalized communities facing a difficult choice in addressing their kids' education? What are you doing to make school more accessible for kids who need it most in the chaos of school reopenings?

• Learn more about parents' concerns over school closures during coronavirus.

Nationwide, fearful that the reopening of schools could lead to more coronavirus outbreaks and presented with less than ideal distance-learning plans, parents are being forced to make difficult choices. Some are leaving their jobs and closing down their businesses. Others are spending thousands of dollars to make sure their children are safe and learning each day. And many more have no idea how they’ll cope with an impossible decision: work or care for their children. The situation is especially dire for single parents, low-income families and those without flexible jobs, who rely on in-person school so they can go to work each day.

The Trump administration is pushing states to reopen their economies and schools, but without more funding for safety measures, many school leaders say reopening is impossible. As a result, more districts are releasing plans to continue instruction online through the fall. School districts that are reopening are often only doing so partially.

Meanwhile, parents say they’ve yet to see any real solutions to the child care crisis that touches millions of American households. While affluent families may be able to afford solutions like starting their own mini-classrooms and hiring teachers, most middle- and low-income families have few to no options.

“The presumption is that we can just shut everything down that we’ve been doing and focus on our kiddos,” said Diana Haggerty, a mom of four in Austin, Texas, who recently launched a local initiative called Stronger Together ATX.

In the absence of federal, state and school-based help for parents, Haggerty says, it’s going to fall on families — and mostly mothers — to come up with solutions, conventional or not, to get through the next school year.

Read the full article about how mothers are sacrificing as the school year approaches by Jackie Mader at The Hechinger Report.