Conversations at home revolve around New York City coronavirus news, the fear of violence against the city’s Asian community, and pending bill payments. Linda and her twin sister manage the bills for their parents. Her mother hasn’t worked in weeks, and she said her dad is currently stuck in Guangdong, China, after traveling there to manage some farmland the family owns.

“It's hard because we're the ones who manage all the bills because they can't really speak English as well as us. It’s like, 'Oh, what's going to happen? Our bills are going to be late — how am I supposed to get this fixed’?” Linda said her school should relax its expectations of students. “I think we all need a break. There's a lot of added stress because we don't really know what's going to happen in the future.”

In Los Angeles, Students Deserve has called for "universal passage" (meaning all students would automatically pass all their classes), and last week LAUSD superintendent Austin Beutner announced that no student would receive a failing grade on their spring report card. This is a “step in the right direction,” said high school senior Asia Bryant. But she said the district’s closure of schools for the remainder of the school year raises other concerns. Distance learning has worn on her mental health: “It not only has caused depression but frustration as well.”

In Chicago, students with Communities United organized a virtual town hall meeting with local representatives and mental health workers to ask for immediate access to resources like an emergency mental health hotline. (Illinois launched Call4Calm, a free mental health hotline, a few days later.) Arnoldo Tello, a high school student living in West Ridge, Chicago, a neighborhood with one of the highest COVID-19 rates in the state of Illinois, said physical distancing is impacting his mental health. “I am away from friends [and] school, unsure how the rest of my senior year will go for me. The support I receive from my friends and school has always helped me deal with my anxiety and depression,” he said. “I feel like all students in all states just feel like we need support to make sure every student feels valid,” Arnoldo told Teen Vogue. He said he just wants “kids to feel safe to talk to someone.”

Students say school officials and representatives need to recognize that the pandemic will exacerbate race and class inequalities. In the virtual town hall meeting, D’Angelo Moore, 18, referred to reports that black people represent 68% of the Chicago fatalities but make up only 30% of the city’s total population, saying, “Why is my community getting hit the hardest? This is why we need more access to social workers and therapists; we need the Chicago Public Schools administration to think about social-emotional learning.”

As the oldest sibling in a mixed-status family living in Skokie, Odalis Garcia, 16, said the state of Illinois should boost undocumented residents’ access to relief programs like the one recently established by the city of Chicago. She said it’s been a struggle making resources stretch in their family now that her single mom can’t work. Undocumented people’s access to relief aid is a student issue, said Odalis, because “standing up for them to get resources when they're in need is going to make a big impact on student needs also.”

UC Berkeley education professor Tolani Britton said the use of distance learning assumes a lot about students’ access to computers, reliable internet connection, space to work at home and parents’ ability to help students with work.