I remember growing a lima bean in Kindergarten, identifying oak and maple leaves on our “nature walk,” cutting with blunt scissors, circling the thing that was not like the others and trying to “lose” my dorky rain hat and getting it returned to me every time.

This year, 62 percent of five-year-olds started School by “sitting at home in front of a computer,” writes Lillian Mongeau on the Hechinger Report.

Nobody thinks online classes work for Children that young.

Kindergarten is for learning by doing, she writes. “While pre-literacy and math skills are covered, building block towers, playing make-believe and mastering the playground equipment are also key elements of this critical grade.”

“I don’t want to pit one grade against another,” said Laura Bornfreund, the director of early and elementary education policy at New America, a progressive think tank. “But the foundational knowledge, the skills to be able to learn and do well in school later are so important. Kindergarten matters a lot.”

Some parents are saying “no” to virtual kindergarten. Nationwide, kindergarten enrollments are down by 600,000 children — about 17 percent — by one estimate. “In Philadelphia, kindergarten enrollment fell 25 percent,” Mongeau reports.

Parents are keeping their five-year-olds in day care, homeschooling or enrolling them in charter or private schools that have reopened.

Jessica Brown, mother of a kindergartener in South Carolina, was able to afford to send their son to Catholic school this year, writes Mongeau. They got the last spot at their parish’s school.

“I feel a bit abandoned and betrayed by the public schools,” Brown said in an email. “If it’s safe for daycares to be open and caring for 4- and 5-year-olds, then I think they could have at least tried to open kindergarten. Instead, they’re treating it like an all or nothing decision. Either the entire school system is open or it’s closed. We need to do better for our youngest kids.”

Black and Hispanic parents are more wary of sending their children back to school, and also less likely to have a choice. More white students have the option of in-person schooling than students of color.

While 40 percent of children from upper-income families are in all-online schools, that goes up to 53 percent for lower-income students, a recent Pew survey reports.

We have a five-year-old in the family who’s going to kindergarten in person. His mother considered homeschooling, but wanted him to be able to interact with kids his own age. She had the choice.

Is it all necessary?

Reopening schools isn’t spreading coronavirus, according to two international studies and a  crowdsourced dashboard of 2,000 U.S. schools, reports NPR’s Anya Kamenetz. Furthermore, a Yale study found that childcare workers who cared for essential workers’ children for the first three months of the pandemic were no more likely to get sick than those who stayed home.