By Heather Tirado Gilligan, California Health Care Foundation, March 29, 2021
Rosario Correa, a mother of three in Sacramento, works the night shift at a fast-food restaurant. She gets home at 2 a.m. and wakes up five and a half hours later to get her kids ready for online school. Much of her income goes to the childcare she needs when she’s working. Correa told Sacramento Bee reporter Kim Bojórquez, “I hardly sleep. It’s been very difficult.”
Women and people of color like Correa have been hit especially hard by the COVID-19 crisis. The economic upheaval that followed pandemic-related shutdowns was unprecedented, the California Budget and Policy Center reported earlier this month, noting that “many women in California were already struggling to pay the bills prior to the onset of the economic crisis.”
Though the pandemic and related school closures, spikes in unemployment, and other woes have challenged most Californians, the COVID-19 crisis hit families with low incomes and families of color with “more devastating force,” according to an Education Trust-West survey conducted in February. Worries about money run high, and the everyday choices forced by economic pressures can be overwhelming, as Karen D’Souza reported for EdSource. “More than a third of parents surveyed,” D’Souza wrote, “have skipped meals or had to cut back on food for the children as a result of the pandemic.”
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