New pandemic school year is a nightmare for parents and a new test for Biden

America's kids, more vulnerable than ever to Covid-19 and in the crossfire of a political war over masks, are going back to class in a timeless rite transformed into a moment of fear by the pandemic that interrupted their childhood.

For so long, this fall was to be a milestone on the road back to normality, as schools fill with students, many of them returning for the first time after 17 months of online lessons -- an eternity for a young developing mind. But the surge in the Delta variant came at just the wrong time -- plunging America back into its public health nightmare when it had seemed, even as a recently as a month ago, that the crisis was easing. The resurgence of the pandemic has led to extreme stress and concern among parents, who are desperate to send their children back to school but are conflicted by a natural instinct to keep them safe -- and who are leery of yet more disruption in the form of quarantines and isolation periods just as employers have begun nudging workers back to offices.