For most students, virtual school is over by now. For parents, the panic about what to do next has been building for weeks.

The summer offers a break from the pressure of trying to teach children while also working from home. But it also opens up vast expanses of time to fill without the same availability of summer camps that working parents rely upon during these months.

Blueprint4Summer, a free resource that allows families to search for camps in the St. Louis metro area, surveyed 558 families from 80 ZIP codes in Missouri and Illinois to explore families’ needs during the summer. Across the region, families shared a number of concerns:

-- Safety. Families are weary of stay-at-home orders, but also deeply worried there won’t be safe, engaging, affordable camp options this summer as states reopen and employers require parents to return. Half of those surveyed said they would consider in-person camps once stay-at-home orders are lifted.

-- Socialization. Families prefer in-person camps to virtual ones, pending public orders and robust camp action to maintain safe spaces. Only 33% of those surveyed said they would consider virtual or online camps. Some reasons given: Some are concerned about the amount of time children have already spent inside, staring at devices, in the past few months. Other parents said they aren’t sure what virtual camp will look like, and they don’t want to be in charge of teaching during virtual experiences. If they did opt for virtual camp, they would expect it to cost less than in-person camp.

-- Enrichment. Many families use day camps as child care for children who are too old for day care centers. They are looking for fun, educational and creative experiences for their children. There’s a documented summer slide -- learning loss that affects children who lack opportunities to continue learning during summer -- and camps help stave off that effect.

Meanwhile, discussions have been raging for weeks in parent chat groups about how to handle the summer. Some of the ideas include finding one other family to merge with to share child care duties. Other parents plan to implement online lessons of some kind, along with household chores that must be completed before the screen-time bingeing begins. Those who have been furloughed or laid off have the added uncertainty of waiting to see if they are called back to work and trying to scramble for care at the last minute.

Some have asked grandparents to self-quarantine for two weeks, while their children are also on lockdown, so they can provide child care with less risk of exposure to the coronavirus.

Those with more flexibility to continue working from home are hoping to schedule play dates and pool time to occupy some of the hours and burn off energy for their little ones.

One mother said, perhaps jokingly, “I think we are just going to shove them outside and let them fight?”

The uncertainty of how to handle summer offers an opportunity for startups like Happy Camper Live, a subscription-based app that provides programming for children. Allison Miller, a camp director of 22 years, launched the app two years ago with a vision to create a virtual summer camp platform. Parents and campers choose from activities and programs led by camp counselors. The app’s programming is not based on a conferencing platform like Zoom, nor does it offer one-on-one interaction.

The desire for reintegrating face-to-face human contact for their children has led parents to consider what level of risk they can handle during the pandemic. Some are comfortable with creating mini-camps with a few friends or neighbors. Others will have no choice but to hunt for affordable child care options near their home or workplace.

The scramble for parents to try to work around a disrupted $4 billion summer camp industry means the summer will provide little relief from the ongoing pressure of the pandemic.

And let’s not even get started about what might happen in the fall.

Pick one: your child, your health or your job.

It’s a cruel and impossible choice. Parental love compels us to protect our children, even at our own expense. But how do we provide for our children without an income? Who takes care of our children if we get seriously ill or die?

This is the wretched calculus some families are grappling with during this pandemic. Parents with young children who must return to work as states reopen are dealing with difficult questions: Is it safe to send my child to day care, where children will inevitably be in close contact with one another? Should I risk exposing an elderly parent to the potentially fatal coronavirus by relying on them for child care? Can I trust an older child to watch younger siblings all day? Should I reach out to high-schoolers and college students for babysitting, even if they may not be following social distancing protocols?

And the most desperate situation: What should I do if there isn’t any child care available that I can afford?

About 45% of licensed day care providers closed their doors during the state stay-at-home orders in Missouri, according to Child Care Aware of Missouri. It’s unknown how many of those providers will reopen as workers are asked to return to their jobs.

“The only way the economy is going to recover is if there is enough child care for children to be left in safe places,” said Robin Phillips, CEO of Child Care Aware of Missouri. “If this child care situation does not improve, we’re going to be in a world of hurt.”

Seven weeks into this crisis, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson addressed the issue last week. Funds from the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act will be used to expand the number of families who qualify for child care subsidies, offer child care support for low-income parents looking for work and disburse grant money to centers that remained open during the shelter-in-place orders. However, there are still significant gaps in the plan: The fate of centers that had to close during this time still needs to be addressed. They will need financial support to reopen.

And while families are struggling with questions about their basic survival, the Republicans in Missouri’s state legislature spent their time last week debating whether to prohibit state and local law enforcement from enforcing federal gun laws. Talk about a complete disconnect from reality.

Perhaps it’s a big ask for those dedicated to the needs of their donors, but, legislators: Consider focusing on the welfare of the children in your state.

Social services departments need to communicate directly and clearly with child care providers who need guidance about how to reopen with new health and safety practices. Incorporating the guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as state and local rules, means adding to the costs for child care programs. Providers will need protective equipment for staff, additional cleaning and sanitation supplies and increased staffing to accommodate the smaller class sizes.

Day care centers already operate on thin margins, employ low-paid workers and rely heavily on tuition, which will take a hit as parents who have lost jobs keep their children at home. These added expenses will go beyond June, when the additional financial support for care programs is scheduled to expire.

Craig Stevenson, director of policy and advocacy with Kids Win Missouri, a child well-being organization, said there is still much more to do if we want our families to get back to work. In the coming months, parents who were counting on summer camps or summer school may no longer have those options as many camps cancel or move online.

“There’s not a lot of clear answers, and that’s a big problem for parents,” he said.

Given that an available workforce is critical to restarting our devastated economy, that’s a big problem for everyone.

When she was about to give birth, Melissa Andrzejewski was reminded of death.

She found out she was pregnant last summer, shortly before her father learned his pancreatic cancer had spread, and that he only had a few months to live.

He died in October. Andrzejewski told her family and friends she would need them more than ever during her labor and delivery.

“I can get through this as long as all of you are with me in the hospital,” she said. That’s what her family does: There were 15 people in the waiting room a year and a half ago when her first baby, Holly, was born. Her sister ordered pizza for everyone while they waited.

Back then, her father was in the hospital with complications of his chemotherapy. He met his granddaughter after he was released, when Holly was 2 weeks old.

Andrzejewski, 28, is an operating room nurse in Troy, Missouri. She kept working at the hospital through her second pregnancy. In mid-March, when she was 37 weeks, a nurse friend from the hospital where she was scheduled to deliver texted her a screenshot of the revised visitation policy due to the coronavirus pandemic.

No visitors would be allowed when she gave birth.

The fact that the waiting room would be empty hit her hard. Andrzejewski broke down, then called her husband and her mom. At her next doctor’s appointment, she asked if it was possible that her husband might even be restricted from attending the birth; her doctor told her it was a very real possibility.

She had already been fearful about being exposed to COVID-19 at her job and possibly being separated from her baby, so Andrzejewski stopped working. She looked into a birthing center, which assured her that her husband could still be present for the birth. But it was too close to her due date for her to feel comfortable about making such a drastic change, and her obstetrician was not keen on the idea.

When she went into labor, she and her husband entered through the ER, wearing face masks, and had their temperatures taken. Andrzejewski’s mother had self-quarantined for two weeks so she could watch Holly.

Hayden was born on April 1, and she met her big sister and grandma through FaceTime.

“(Holly) called herself ‘sissy,’” Andrzejewski said. It made her emotional to think that her father would never get to know Hayden. But the moment Hayden was born, Andrzejewski said she experienced an overwhelming feeling that her dad had met Hayden before and was there with her.

“I had an image in my head that he had kissed her and handed her over to me,” she said.

They came home 24 hours after the birth, and waited a month before any relatives met Hayden. Andrzejewski has barely left the house, except to go to the backyard with the babies.

“I don’t have plans on taking either one of the girls out for months,” she said, even though her county has reopened. She’s nervous about the expected second wave of infections, and isn’t sure when she might return to work.

She’s taken some comfort in how much Hayden resembles her father, Steve.

“My dad was Italian, and Hayden looks exactly like him,” she said. She said he would have been screaming it from the mountaintops that he has a grandchild that looks like him.

Recently, she did venture out for an outing she felt compelled to do: She took her daughters to visit her father’s gravesite.

“Here are your two grandbabies,” she said. “I wish you were here to see how much she looks like you.”

Once in a while, her mom will call the baby “Stevie.”

It’s a reminder that a little piece of her father is still with her.