DALLAS — Hannah Lebovits has a new perspective that she's happy to share in case it helps anyone else.
"There's no way I could have known how I would feel right now without experiencing this, but I don't want other parents to experience this," she said.
Lebovits' family just moved to North Texas, and in the shadow of the pandemic she signed up her two kids under 6 for camp.
"We picked the camp that would be the highest standard in terms of safety," she said. "They were doing temperature checks, same parent dropoff and pickup, no adults coming into the building, kids wearing masks."
Plano's Camp Gan Israel's rules made her feel more confident until it saw four coronavirus cases in mid-July. The camp took no chances and shut down. Lebovits appreciated the quick response, but it got her thinking.
"You know, camp was going to be a test drive for school," she said.
That has been a worry for parents, as they see camps, recently including Keystone Church's, where kids are together and cases come up.
"It's not just the camp experience, but it's been our experience here in North Texas, other places in the country, in other countries, said Dr. Jeffrey Kahn, chief of infectious diseases at Children’s Health and associate professor at UT Southwestern. "You get a lot of people together and the virus starts spreading."
Kahn says parents should take that information into account as they make choices for the fall.
"I think the message here is that there's going to be transmission in the schools. That's pretty clear," he said.
Lebovits now has her own clarity, even after a good camp experience. This fall, she's preparing to home school her kids.
"Again, this is an example of where they did everything right, like truly 100 percent everything," she said. "And already it's just….a mess."