As schools reopen, Asian American students are missing from classrooms

It’s happening in well-to-do Pakistani households in the suburbs of Washington and among Chinese restaurant workers in Philadelphia. It’s happening among weary Filipino nurses in Queens, Hmong refugee families in Minneapolis and in Silicon Valley’s Asian American community.

As school buildings start to reopen, Asian and Asian American families are choosing to keep their children learning from home at disproportionately high rates. They say they are worried about elderly parents in cramped, multigenerational households, distrustful of promised safety measures and afraid their children will face racist harassment at school. On the flip side, some are pleased with online learning and see no reason to risk the health of their family.