More than 23 million parents are backed into a corner right now.

That’s how many parents the Brookings Institution estimates rely on school and child care programs while they go to work to be able to provide for their families. Their ability to work is essential to our country’s economic recovery.

But while our government will scramble to bail out airlines and banks and car manufacturers, you don’t hear the same kind of urgency around a child care bailout during this pandemic. No one has a good answer for what working parents required to return to their offices are supposed to do if it’s not safe for schools to reopen in person. There are children too young to stay at home alone whose parents may not have access to or cannot afford child care.

And in places where the coronavirus is surging, the answer is not to simply reopen schools -- putting teachers, staff and parents at risk.

The St. Louis Public Schools are considering learning centers where children would be supervised while receiving online lessons. But for parents like Mia Daugherty, a single mom in St. Louis, the fear of exposure to the virus means she will be keeping her 5-year-old daughter, Zara, at home for kindergarten.

“She’s not going to school until COVID numbers look a lot better than how they look now,” Daugherty said. “It doesn’t make sense to put my child’s life at risk, and the teachers, administrators and staff at risk. A lot of kids are asymptomatic, and I’m not willing to gamble on anyone’s life.”

Daugherty, who is Black, knows the health risks from COVID-19 are far greater for her community. She’s not sure how she will manage home-schooling her daughter while working full-time from home.

Zara had been doing exceptionally well before preschool ended in March and had been accepted into a gifted magnet school for the fall.

“It was much more difficult for (Zara) to focus on the last two months of work. I know her skills and progress are not where they could have been,” Daugherty said. She knows that virtual learning, especially for kindergartners, who learn best through play, is not the same as being in a classroom with peers and teachers. Zara was reading and writing on a first-grade level in pre-K, and now her mom is seeing a little bit of a decline in those skills.

“My plate is already so full,” she said. “I’m juggling multiple things, so I’m already stretching myself so thin. I take breaks to give her meals, but I haven’t had time to spend with her. This is what I have to do to survive, and in order for us to be able to live.”

She knows there are parents in even more dire circumstances -- those who don’t have a job and are facing eviction and financial ruin and those with children with disabilities who need special services. That’s not to mention the millions of children who rely on schools for meals and refuge from unsafe homes.

For now, Daugherty can’t even think about how she will balance the educational, social and emotional needs of her young daughter with a full-time job that demands her attention all day.

“I honestly can’t even cross that bridge of how I will home-school her ... It might send me into a panic attack,” she said.

Where is the sense of urgency for Zara and kids like her?

Where is the help for working parents who are critical to our economy?

For a country that has sidelined the needs of families for so long, this crisis has turned the cracks in our society into craters.

Politicians have ignored the desperation of 23 million parents at their own peril.

Now, it’s time for a reckoning.

On the bitterly divisive issue of returning to school, there’s one thing every parent can agree on: There are no good options. Every choice comes at a cost.

That’s where the agreement ends.

As schools announce their plans for how they will educate students during the COVID-19 pandemic, the reactions are as varied as families’ unique circumstances. Some are committed to having their children return to in-person instruction in school buildings, while others can’t imagine that happening safely.

In the Rockwood School District in suburban St. Louis, some parents are petitioning and protesting for more in-person instruction options, while others across the region are forming small pods to hire private tutors and teachers. Some families are opting out, choosing their own homeschool plans over a virtual school option.

But the voices of educators, who will be on the front lines of possible virus exposure in school buildings, are just as important to this debate as those of parents.

Mindy Grossman, a middle school guidance counselor in the St. Louis area, recently posted her frustrations online, and she agreed to share her post as it was written:

“The past two days since the school announcement was made have been a roller coaster of emotions. It has only been made worse by the comments on social media.

“I have been an educator for 30 years. During that time I have endured comments from friends, such as ‘But you get the whole summer off’ or ‘Don’t you just sit in your office and drink coffee?’

“I have bitten my tongue when the principal says the parent is right. I have spent thousands of dollars to buy your kid’s shoes, pay for his field trip, treat him to the snack bar because he is crying that he forgot his money and bought birthday treats for him to share with the class because you were too busy and forgot. ...

“I have held your crying kid while my own is waiting in the nurse’s office for me at their school. I have talked you off the ledge when you wanted to cuss out the teacher for treating your kid unfairly.

“I have listened while you tell me how to do my job even though I have never told you how to do yours! Ask my family -- I have calls and emails at night, on weekends and all summer long. I have missed my kids’ school events so that I could be there for your kids.

“And the list goes on.

“I am not saying this for thanks or for recognition. If you know me, you know I am not looking for that. I do these things because I believe in the work I have done each and every day for the past 30 years. But the response to the whole school fiasco has made me angry. Does this suck for everyone? Yes! Is there an easy answer to this? Absolutely not! But what hurts and angers me the most is that, after all I have given to you and your family through these years, during a crisis, you feel like your needs are more important than mine.

“And that, to me, shows the ultimate disrespect.”

Emotions are running high for parents who feel backed into making terrible decisions about their children’s education. But Grossman’s words ought to remind us of the risks we are asking educators to take by returning to their classrooms. A recent study found that 1 in 4 teachers, or about 1.47 million people nationwide, have a condition that puts them at higher risk of serious illness from coronavirus.

Teachers chose their profession knowing that it demands sacrifices. But those sacrifices should not include risking their lives and health during a pandemic.

Neither the pandemic nor the government’s bungled response is the fault of educators.

They shouldn’t be expected to pay the price.

A sinking sense of deja vu struck this week.

Remember when it became official that our kids were not going back to school after spring break in March? Anyone who was paying attention to COVID-19 data knew that it was unlikely that schools would risk reopening -- cases were rising, and cities and counties issued stay-at-home orders.

But the realization that the school year had been cut nearly three months short with a slapdash effort to educate kids remotely hit like a ton of bricks, especially for those with graduating seniors.

Now it’s decision time for how to go back to school, so multiply that previous anxiety and sadness with unbridled anger.

Schools in the metro St. Louis region unveiled their plans for the return to schooling for the fall. Depending on the district, options might include in-person instruction, all online or a hybrid. Even if your child goes to school five days a week, we know a localized COVID outbreak could change everything.

In-school scenarios -- let alone distance learning -- will not be the same educational experience our children need and deserve. Meanwhile, the number of coronavirus infections continues to surge.

Beginning in March, students are facing at least a nine-month educational disruption. The loss of teacher-led instructional time, peer interactions and extracurricular activities is going to take a significant toll on our children’s academic, social and emotional lives. It’s not as simple as making up a semester’s worth of learning later. For some students, this pandemic will irreparably damage their life trajectories.

Here’s the blood-boiling, infuriating part: It didn’t have to be this way.

Look at what’s happened in other countries. We’ve had far more deaths, over 140,000, than anywhere else. The U.S. death toll from coronavirus is more than twice as high as the next-most-affected country, Brazil. We have the third-highest number of deaths per 100,000, according to Johns Hopkins data. There’s a reason Americans are barred from traveling into much of the rest of the world. They see us as disease vectors.

“The reality is this: Trump’s response to the pandemic, measured against the efforts of other developed countries, has been an unmitigated disaster,” professor Brian Klaas recently wrote in an op-ed in The Washington Post. Compared with those peer countries with a similar combined population, the new caseload in the United States is roughly 50 times worse, he notes.

Much of the COVID-related death and destruction could have been prevented if our government had taken the decisive actions other nations did to contain the spread and if people had followed social distancing and mask-wearing protocol. Only in America did the simple act of wearing a mask to save people’s lives become a politicized debate.

Back when the pandemic began raging through the Western world, I thought that American children would end up in roughly the same place as other children in the developed world. But while everyone else listened to their scientists and medical experts, took aggressive steps to contain the spread and reopened schools, our leaders downplayed the risks, attacked experts and let the virus spread like wildfire.

Schools in countries that handled this far better than us have been open. American schoolchildren will be falling behind their global peers.

American children in areas throughout the country will miss first days of kindergarten and senior year and major transitions in between. Our children will miss time with teachers and peers and the countless moments that are crucial to their development and growth.

We know who robbed our children of once-in-a-lifetime milestones and nearly a year of education. The political leadership that allowed this virus to spread unchecked, ignored the scientists and doctors, spread misinformation, and delayed critical testing and contact tracing that could have slowed the virus earlier.

We will remember the elected officials who failed to protect us and wrecked a significant part of our children’s education. Elected officials have underestimated our rage over what our children have needlessly lost.

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson said on a conservative radio show recently, “These kids have got to get back to school. ... And if they do get COVID-19, which they will -- and they will when they go to school -- they’re not going to the hospitals. ... They’re going to go home and they’re going to get over it.”

He later said he “didn’t do a good job explaining his thoughts on schools reopening.”

Oh, we understood exactly what you meant.

And you know who won't forget this attitude?

Moms won’t forget. We can remember where every gadget in the house ends up, where the pants you haven’t seen in two months are put away and who made a passive-aggressive comment about a child at a family gathering 10 years ago.

Come November, we won’t forget who got us here.