Here at NEPC, we are holding close our small community and the larger communities to which we belong. Those of us who are parents or guardians are also doing our best to comfort our children and create healthy living and learning environments. We remind ourselves and each other to be generous and understanding when we fail to accomplish our immediate goals for ourselves and our children. This crisis will have impacts, large and small. The hardships it’s creating are universally felt, yet they fall hardest on our society’s most vulnerable. The crisis is also highlighting the multiplicity of demands we’ve put on our public schools and the people working in them, providing a powerful reminder that we’ve entrusted our schools to meet the needs of our children in wide-ranging ways. We are grateful to our neighbors, parents, teachers, children and youth, as well as the workers in our grocery stores and warehouses, our delivery people and public safety workers, and of course those working in health care facilities. As we move forward, we at NEPC promise to continue our efforts to increase the equity and effectiveness of public education and to support democratic deliberation about education policy.