Asian Americans wary about school amid virus, violence

BOSTON (AP) — A Chinese American mother in the Boston suburbs is sending her sons to in-person classes this month, even after one of them was taunted with a racist “slanted-eyes” gesture at school, just days after the killings of women of Asian descent at massage businesses in Atlanta.

In the Dallas area, a Korean American family is keeping their middle schooler in online classes for the rest of the year after they spotted a question filled with racist Chinese stereotypes, including a reference to eating dogs and cats, on one of her exams.

As high schools and elementary schools across the country gradually re-open for full-time classes, Asian American families are wrestling with whether to send their children back out into the world at a time when anti-Asian hostility and violence is on the rise.

Some Asian American parents say they’re content to keep their children in virtual classes, especially with the school year winding down and COVID-19 cases rising in places. Others are conceding to adolescents craving normalcy, while still others refuse to shield their youths from bigotry.

Asian American students have the highest rates of remote learning more than a year after the coronavirus pandemic shuttered school buildings and forced districts to pivot to online classes. A federal government survey released earlier this month found just 15% of Asian American fourth graders were attending classes in-person as of February, compared with more than half of white fourth graders.

Those rates appear to be rising in some cities, but are still far lower than those of Black, Latino and white students. In Sacramento, Boston and Chicago public schools, for example, roughly a third of Asian American students are expected to return to in-person classes this month, compared with some 70% of white students, according to the...