For more than a year, California’s public schools have largely been closed, and their students have been learning remotely, online. For the students, it has been an unmitigated disaster, with well-documented increases in psychiatric illnesses, anxiety and depression, and losses in learning progress, especially in minority and lower-income households.

For the parents, school closures have created an incalculable burden. Adults returning to workplaces have been forced to make tough decisions about leaving young children unsupervised or quitting their jobs. The fallout has been particularly harsh on women, who make up the lion’s share of those not returning to work. With the end of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act on Dec. 31, the financial safety net for parents requiring leave to supervise children completely disappeared.