After a holiday break that saw Covid-19 cases spike unrelentingly, a small but growing list of districts — including Newark, Atlanta, Milwaukee and Cleveland — moved temporarily to remote learning for more than 450,000 children…

“It’s chaos,” said Keri Rodrigues, president of the National Parents Union, which has polled families throughout the pandemic. “The No. 1 thing that parents and families are crying out for is stability.”

Some families were given just a few days or even hours of notice about school closures, leading to the all-too-familiar pandemic scramble to adjust child-care arrangements and work schedules. Atlanta Public Schools, for instance, announced on Saturday that classes would be online for the first week of January, just days after saying that classes would be held in person…

“No grace is extended to us,” she said of parents who would have to go out to work, whether or not their children’s schools were open.