The closings of schools in Massachusetts and elsewhere, brought on by the coronavirus, brings on a number of dilemmas for working parents.
"Do I go to work or do I stay home with my children?" asked Yvonne Frazier. "One week, it's OK, but when they said two weeks, to now they said three weeks, now everybody's freaking out."
Frazier is a nurse at Lawrence General Hospital. She has to show up for work all while managing her 3-year-old and other children in the second, sixth and 10th grades.
"They actually sent my little ones home with enough work for them," Frazier said. "I think if they are staying home with a mom or dad or sibling, you make sure that they continue on the path and still having to do that work that was given to them."
Lesson plans, it seems, will last. But for many now out of work, the money won't.
"What is it that the government can do?" Frazier asked.
"The secretary of the treasury said there's going to be direct payments to Americans, and I think in the end, if you have to be home with your children, if you have to be home for social distancing, if you get sick and you have to be home for all those reasons and there's a financial impact, I think there's going to be an accounting, and I think those people are going to be made whole," said Lawrence Mayor Dan Rivera.
In the end, Frazier says her kids being home is far better than them being patients.
"I'd rather have our kids home and not being part of the spreading of this," she said. "Because we don't know what it is."
