I do agree with this, the option should be there. But in reality it's difficult, if not impossible, to do this. I'll give you some middle/high school perspective, but note that I feel this doesn't really apply to elementary. They have smaller classes and I see little reason why k-6 students shouldn't be on campus based on current data. Even if they choose to go remote, the material is so simple that any adult at home can grasp it and help out.
Teaching single subjects online is completely different than teaching in person. You can't just post assignments and have the remote students do them without explanation, doing so is practically worthless and you'll get very little buy in. Being a parent who is also an instructor, I'm very comfortable in saying at least 80% of parents are terrible instructors and cannot help their students at home. They are stressed out, don't have the patience, and don't have the skills. It's not their fault, I fail miserably at things I don't know how to do too. I can't expect my typical parent at home to understand even basic scientific theory, it's not fair to them.
So what are the options?
The best is live streaming/recording lectures, but the infrastructure would need to be in place already. Teachers need multiple devices to do this, you can't just stick a laptop on your desk and press record. Remote students won't hear/understand you well if you do and your camera probably isn't going to pick up much of anything on your screen unless you have a high contrast LCD display. A typical classroom projector will be mostly washed out stuff that's difficult to read. If live streaming, you need enough bandwidth to make it possible (a rarity on campuses) and understand how to actually pull it off. You need to be able to hear your remote attendees and be able to interact with them. You need a backup streaming system if yours is down. Most teachers have to buy supplies of their own because of budgets, so unless a school is already 1:1 this isn't an option for 95% of public schools out there. They can do it cheaply, but it's going to suck. Students are going to whine and use it as an excuse to do nothing, then parents are going to whine because they are missing work for their students to fail.
Another option is to have teachers run online meetings outside of school hours, which isn't feasible either. There isn't enough time in the day, my brain is literally always on the clock due to streams of emails and I'm in a much better situation than most. Hiring new teachers or expanding online homeschool isn't a viable option, there is a shortage of teachers as it is so you aren't going to find anyone qualified when they know it's like a temporary holiday contract. And most budgets prevent this anyways.
So what we end up with is an all or none approach which is the only thing that most schools can afford. And it's BS because it didn't have to be that way. For years teachers knew there was little preparedness and even less accountability from the educational system, now it's biting them in the ass.
The best option as a parent is to send your kids to a private school where they have all these things. I have the ability to livestream, I have two devices and a camera and all the necessary audio equipment, a dedicated livestream/recording virtual classroom (not Zoom, Meet, or any of that stuff), and more bandwidth than I could ever use. The downside is it's a huge amount of work (way more than usual) and if I don't get shit done it's my own damn fault. With that comes high expectations, which I am fine with. From a parental point of view the elephant in the room is that even with financial aid, most families can't afford that even during the best of times, let alone when people are out of work. So what we end up with is a bigger gap between the well to do and the folks who struggle, which doesn't help matters at all. Not to mention it's not fair to the kids when their only sin was being born to a family who has to struggle to make it.
The education system in this country is perpetually hanging on by a thread as it is. Like someone living paycheck to paycheck, it wasn't prepared for any disaster or event and it's really showing. The only positive I've seen is I don't have to read the "Teachers don't work Summers off lulz" stuff anymore. The first month of parents teaching their kids took care of that.
My biggest hope is that once this is all over that schools realize it could and will happen again, and our educational system cleans up their bureaucratic mess of excess administrators to actually become somewhat efficient. I'm sure I will be disappointed.
