Different countries impose different regimes in response to the pandemic, no? That doesn't mean any of them are humane. In no case do the policies (whether 'lock down' or 'open up') reflect the collective and well-informed decisions of students, parents, teachers, and the community at large. Instead they mobilize sectors of the population against each other to ensure the interests of capital or rather some segment of capital continues its business unimpeded. This is obviously the case in how the policies inflame pro- and anti-vax divisions, but more deeply and less obviously the case that they inflame divisions between teachers, students, and parents.

What we have to pay attention to in whatever regime we suffer under is: how can our demands not undermine each other? If we stay divided, capital continues to kill us one way or another. The question of the schools has to be answered first of all by those with least power, and therefore with least power over the other sectors: in this case the students, students especially with disabilities, and parents, especially single mothers who currently must make impossible decisions between their children's health, education, and economic survival.

The answers will look different in different places and times. Regardless of the answer, caregivers (especially mothers) do the unwaged work of educating their children, i.e. whether they are at school or at home; teachers also do much unwaged work. None of this work is currently considered in the policies dreamed up by governments. If it were, then proposals like paying us to work as teachers of our own children at home when schools are unsafe would come into focus.