A public health expert who spent two decades studying pandemic preparedness. A mother who makes DoorDash deliveries to scrape together extra money for her son’s learning pod. A single-parent who worries no one can help care for her son if she becomes sick with COVID-19.

They all faced, in recent weeks and months, one of the most fraught questions confronting parents during the pandemic: should they send their children back to school for in-person learning, or not?

D.C. Public Schools started returning thousands of students to face to face instruction for the first time in nearly a year on Tuesday. The return, months in the making, has been beset with criticism from some teachers, families and education advocates who argue it is unsafe to return students to classrooms during the coronavirus pandemic.

Schools Chancellor Lewis D. Ferebee has pointed to research that shows campuses can safely reopen with precautions, most recently citing a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that says schools are not driving rapid spread of the virus in communities. 

“The science is clear. Schools are safe, and we know the best place for students to learn is in the classroom,” Ferebee said in a statement Saturday. “Our students are ready, our buildings are ready, our staff is ready.”

Ferebee has also said in-person learning opportunities are crucial for schoolchildren who already face barriers to learning and are likely to fall further behind academically. The majority of students who are returning to campuses belong to low-income families, receive special education services, are English Language Learners or face homelessness.

In preschool through fifth grade, 2,600 students who are returning are Black, 1,500 are Latino, 1,800 are white and 400 students are of another race, according to D.C. schools data.

But many educators and families remain unconvinced.

More than 9,000 students have signed up for in-person learning, thousands fewer than the school system said it can serve. Low-income and Black and Hispanic families have disproportionately suffered health and financial consequences of the pandemic, making many of them more reluctant to send their children back to school, some educators and parents say.

Far more families in wards 7 and 8, areas of the city with large numbers of low-income families, rejected in-person learning seats than families in Ward 3, the wealthiest part of the city, according to school system data.

But the decision to choose in-person learning or not during the pandemic is deeply personal. Here is how five families decided.

The mother who got COVID-19

Alexandra Simbana was in a hospital bed, her breath labored after becoming sick with COVID-19, trying to figure out who would watch her 15-month-old twins and 8-year-old daughter if her husband contracted the coronavirus, too.

She texted a friend, “Please just take care of my babies,” recalled Simbana, whose oldest daughter Natalie Rose is a student at Cleveland Elementary School in Shaw.

Simbana’s hospital stay lasted nine days in May. But many of her symptoms persist, more than seven months later.

She was hooked to an oxygen tank for six weeks after returning home, she said. Her hair fell out and is growing back slowly. The virus damaged her liver. She becomes winded climbing a flight of stairs.

“This is what can happen,” she said. “And this is what I want to keep from people.”

She has been a vocal critic of the city’s plans to reopen campuses, testifying to her own experience with COVID-19 in public hearings.

“When someone tells you they’re scared of dying, that is something that should give you pause,” she said. “You should really consider where that person is coming from.”

Each time D.C. Public Schools has tried to bring students back to classrooms since March, the mother said she has contacted administrators at Cleveland preemptively with a message: her daughter will not return.

Simbana, a PTA member who is a touchpoint for many Spanish-speaking immigrant families at the school, said many of those families fear sending their children back for in-person learning. Many already face higher health risk and missing work due to illness could be financially devastating, she said.

“We’ll figure it out some way. We’ll limp along,” she said of getting through distance learning. “But it’s really about survival.”

The public health expert faced with a hard decision

As a public health professional, Jason Rao has trained in immunology at the National Institutes of Health. He was a senior advisor to former president Barack Obama, witnessing up-close the U.S. government’s response to the H1N1 and Ebola outbreaks. He has spent the last 20 years working on how to prepare for pandemics.

As an Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner, Rao has watched virtual public meetings where parents on both sides of the controversial school reopening debate forcefully defended their positions.

And as a father, Rao and his wife faced the difficult task of deciding if they should send their two elementary school-age children back to classrooms. His 8-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter were invited back for in-person learning two days a week at Francis Scott Key Elementary School in the Palisades.

Ultimately, Rao and his wife decided to keep their children home, despite the difficulty they have had juggling their children’s schooling while also working from home.

Rao, a faculty member at Cornell University, said the decision was driven by a few factors: the pace of vaccine distribution, the rise in the number of COVID-19 cases among children and new, more contagious variants of the virus.

He  would reconsider sending his children back to school after more teachers and community members can get vaccinated and if the school system offers instruction outdoors, where COVID-19 is less likely to spread.

“DCPS has done its level best to try and respond to an ever-changing pandemic with limited resources,” he said. “Of course, could we be doing more? Yes. Could we be doing better? Yes. Should we have had a federal plan in place? Yes.”

Rao’s son, who is in first grade, enjoys spending time with his parents and was happy to stay home. But Rao’s daughter is more social and desperately misses school. 

He explained to her that coronavirus cases are rising because of “decisions people are making.”

The kindergartner said she understood and told her dad they should wait.

The parent who questions if she is making the right choice 

Last spring, at the height of pandemic restrictions in the District, Neha Misra’s 9-year-old son would grow nervous each time they went outdoors. He was wary of everyone they encountered on the street, fearful of strangers who could be carrying the virus.

So Misra was surprised when her son, Kavi, declared he wanted to go back to school. 

“He’s begging me,” said Misra, who relented. “My anxious kid, who is usually not one to jump into things that he thinks are unsafe, he’s the one whose begging me to let him go.”

The fourth grader is enrolled in a CARE classroom at Ross Elementary School in Dupont Circle, where he would still be learning virtually under the supervision of an adult.

Misra, who chairs a school advisory committee of parents and educators at Ross, said she would have been more open to sending him back if he was receiving live in-person instruction from a teacher. But Ross did not have enough staff or space to offer face to face instruction for the fourth grade.

The single mother said she and her son talked about the pros and cons of returning to Ross. Pros: recess, having access to a playground, seeing three of his closest friends, building resilience. Cons: getting sick.

If it were only up to her, Misra said she would have her son stay home. She is still torn about letting him go and doesn’t know who will care for her son if she becomes ill with COVID-19.

“I’m less worried about him getting it. I’m worried about him passing it on to me,” Misra said. “His need to be around his peers is more important to me. So hopefully everything will be OK.”

But she knows her son craves more social interaction — she arranges outdoor meetups with friends and has her son take taekwondo lessons once a week in a park — but he grows restless in their small apartment. The CDC report that showed school can safely reopen with certain protocols in place also helped sway her decision.

Kavi’s return to in-person school will come with some sacrifices: the boy can’t have sleepovers with his two cousins in Silver Spring anymore and he won’t be able to visit his grandmother in Pennsylvania.

“I don’t think I’m going to sleep until the summer when he’s out of school because I’m going to be worried that I have COVID,” Misra said.

The cash-strapped family scraping together money for a learning pod

Patricia Stamper noticed her 5-year-old son, a student at John Burroughs Elementary in Brookland, had gained weight and grown depressed after months of virtual learning.

She decided to find him a learning pod, a sizable expense for Stamper, and said she makes $20.15 an hour as an instructional aide at Miner Elementary School, and her husband, who makes $12.47 an hour working at a golf course.

“We’ve been taking on extra work to make it work,” she said.

Stamper said she delivers takeout for DoorDash three or four nights a week to help pay for the pod, where her son, Pete, logs on to remote learning and interacts with other young children.

The boy, who receives speech services at school, was invited back for in-person learning. But Stamper declined, wary of the germs other students could bring to the classroom.

Stamper, who lives in Deanwood, is also required to work in person by DCPS in the third quarter. When she returned to Miner last week, she said dust coated the surfaces of the room she uses to work with students.

“The fact that I’ve come to my job and my school and see this isn’t clean as it should be, what am I supposed to expect at his school?” Stamper said. “My child is going to stay right where he is. We’re going to figure out how to pay for it. And, for right now, I feel like we’re doing the best thing to keep our child safe.”

The parent who refuses to be viewed as a ‘rich, white mom’

Svetlana Vtyurina accepted an in-person learning assignment for her 8-year-old son at Janney Elementary School in Tenleytown to prove a point.

“We would accept anything right now to make a point that schools should open,” she said, adding she does not feel the limited face to face instruction will vastly improve her son’s education. “We’ve basically written off this year already.”

Vtyurina is alarmed by the level of instruction she said her two sons are receiving. Her younger son, Michael, a second grader at Janney, is expected to spend half of most school days and all day Wednesday completing assignments on his own.

“They are completely under-teaching them and I am horrified,” she said, adding it is difficult to keep her son on task as he tries to watch Netflix or play with neighborhood friends during the school day.

She has hired tutors for Michael and her older son, Ian, a sixth grader at Alice Deal Middle School, to supplement their education. She asked teachers for extra assignments.

Michael is slated to receive about two hours and 45 minutes of face to face instruction four days a week, which Vtyurina still does not feel is enough.

“There’s no way you can fit the entire year into four half-days for any grade,” she said.

The mother said she is angry the Washington Teachers’ Union has fought to keep schools closed. An immigrant, she is also frustrated by criticism from some parents and educators who say wealthy white families are mostly driving the push to reopen schools. She feels families who feel unsafe sending their children back for in-person learning are not following science.

“I understand where this is where different levels of education kick in, different levels of being aware of what’s going on,” she said. “I refuse to be looked at as a rich, white mom.”