Wilson High School, the District’s largest public high school, was open for business as usual on Tuesday, but Brian Smith kept his daughter home.

       The ongoing surge in coronavirus infections — including 50 positive tests at Wilson, according to its student newspaper — was enough to spook him and many other parents across the city.

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       “Hearing all of the cases in the schools and the constant string of emails about children testing positive right here at the end of the semester … it just made sense to take a step back and let the holidays come,” said Smith, 43, who lives in Glover Park. Smith said he tries not to “overreact or underreact,” but the recent wave, he said, “seems to hit a little closer to home.”

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       On Tuesday evening, with one day to go before the holiday break, Wilson became the latest D.C. school to shift to virtual learning because of coronavirus outbreaks. Drew Elementary School and West Elementary School both closed at 1 p.m. Tuesday, following nine other DCPS campuses.

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       For D.C. students who chose to attend classes Tuesday, hallways usually filled with their peers seemed noticeably emptier. Principals have been stressed over how to carry out operations while classes — and at certain points, entire grade levels — went virtual, moving staff members into quarantine. Teachers who were already burned out as a result of the pandemic are navigating how to educate children while dealing with their own anxiety about the spread of the virus.

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       “I think there’s a lot of kids who aren’t in school because they don’t feel safe to come to school,” said Eric Washington, a teacher at Columbia Heights Educational Campus. And “there’s a lot of teachers who are frustrated about the fact that they do have to come to school.”

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       A teacher at Marie Reed Elementary School, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said the Adams Morgan school also saw “an unusual number of absences” on Tuesday.

       “It’s probably a mixed bag between kids whose parents are afraid of them getting infected and some kids who are actually sick or tested positive,” the teacher said. “In our second grade, three kids were exposed, and more than half of kids weren’t there.”

       The teacher estimated that Marie Reed’s sick adults, though, outnumbered its sick students.

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       In May, when cases were declining in the region, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) pledged that all D.C. children would be required to return to school buildings in the fall, unless they had a doctor-approved medical exemption. She said in August that if cases reached “a trend of concern,” her administration would do what is “necessary.”

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       “We know what they have lost in being out of school and being disconnected from school, and we’re going to do everything as a government to keep our children connected,” Bowser said during a news conference Monday. “Having said that, we recognize that our school leaders have to operate the buildings and they’re going to let us know what they need to do that and do it safely.”

       D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Lewis D. Ferebee has previously said the system takes a three-layered approach when it comes to deciding whether to move a school to virtual instruction: seek out guidance from D.C. Health, examine how many students have been required to quarantine, and consider whether the school can continue to operate — especially if a high number of staff members cannot come in.

       But the details of what is considered a critical mass of people out are unclear. Richard Jackson, who heads the Council of School Officers, a union for mid-level leadership, said the school system has “been somewhat evasive” when asked.

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       “We just want a clear line around what are the benchmarks that a school reaches in order to be viewed as a school that can go virtual, and that hasn’t been made clear,” Jackson said.

       Deb Goldberg, who has two children in D.C. Public Schools, said many parents at both those schools debated keeping their children home this week given the case surge, though Goldberg decided to send hers in.

       At Oyster-Adams Bilingual School, where she has a seventh-grade son, Goldberg said parents on a WhatsApp text chain were buzzing about a possible exposure on a bus trip, not sure what to do about it. Her older son is in ninth grade at School Without Walls, where rumors were flying of a significant outbreak.

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       Her children have not been identified by the school as close contacts of people with the virus, but Goldberg worried they may have been exposed outside of school. The family is leaving this week on a road trip to Florida to see a small group of relatives, and that concerned her, too.

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       The high school’s Home School Association stirred fears with an email Friday warning the community to follow coronavirus protocols strictly.

       “While only 7 positive Covid cases have been communicated publicly via formal notification letters, teachers and students are reporting mass absences and positive cases to the HSA Board,” the association wrote. “We believe there are upwards of 30 positive cases at School Without Walls that are currently under investigation via DCPS Covid response protocols and worry the communications lag risks the health and safety of our school community and families.”

       Two days later, on Sunday, the school sent a formal notice of 29 positive cases.

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       Goldberg’s ninth-grade son, Max Scott, argued for staying home because so many teachers were out.

       “There was no point in going because we didn’t have any work or teachers,” he said in an interview. “But you don’t want an unexcused absence, so you got to attend.”

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       After school on Tuesday, Max reported that classes this week were about half empty.

       “I’ve had, I think, one teacher in two days, so that’s not good,” he said. He said teachers have assigned work electronically but that most students spend the class period looking at their phones.

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       His mother decided to send her children to school double-masked: one surgical mask and one KN-95.

       “I thought through the risk of exposure versus what I thought were the benefits of being in school consistently,” Goldberg said. She decided the risks, given their vaccinations, were minimal.

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       “That was a trade-off I was willing to make. There is no way to reduce the risk to zero when you send them to school. I acknowledge that,” she said.

       But Goldberg fears that D.C. schools might again move to virtual learning, so it’s important, she said, to take advantage of in-person classes while they are offered.

       “I honestly don’t know how much longer they’ll be in school,” she said. “As long as we’re in person, I’ll send them.”

       Hours later, Oyster-Adams made an announcement: It was going virtual, too.