The coronavirus is the scariest monster to slash “Sleepaway Camp” since the cult-classic horror flick franchise of the same name.
When Sasha Leitner heard the devastating news that her summer “experience” at the Eisner Camp in Great Barrington, Mass., was cancelled for safety reasons — it was a lot to take after weeks of lockdown.
“I was crying, and my heart started racing,” the 12-year-old Lower East Sider tells The Post. “You can take away school and even my bat mitzvah — but please universe, don’t take away my camp from me!,” her dad, Brett Leitner, recalls Sasha telling him.
“It’s a bad blow … He took it better than me — because I’m going to be stuck with him.”
- Deborah Davis Hurwitz, mom
But as camp programs around the country pull the plug to stop the spread of COVID-19 — it’s the grown ups who are in a pandemic panic over the loss of a summer break.
Parents pay thousands of dollars for these annual weeks of kid-free bliss — and maybe even some sexy adult adventures. Now, folks face surviving summer trapped with their stir-crazy kids after an already chaotic month of homeschooling in quarantine.
“I almost cried. It’s a bad blow,” says Forest Hills mom Deborah Davis Hurwitz. Her 11-year-old, Jordan, was all set for his first sleepaway camp at Massachusetts’ 6 Points Sci-Tech Academy — which runs $3,450 to $4,750 per session — until bombshell bad news dropped Thursday.
“It’s going to be bedlam, especially for us parents in the city,” Hurwitz says of the closure. “He took it better than me — because I’m going to be stuck with him.”
When the coronavirus began to choke every aspect of life for New Yorkers, it wasn’t long before parents started to dread the demise of their de facto summer baby sitters, too. After all, a campground’s tight bunk quarters, communal mess halls and adult staff co-mingling are the stuff of social-distancing nightmares.
But the alternative is chilling.
“I’m 100 percent in panic mode,” says Amanda Goldberg, whose 12-year-old son, Justin, was set to attend the exclusive $14,000 Explo overnight summer program for the third straight year.
“The idea that both kids will be home with no town pools, no beaches open — what will we do? How will they make it through the day?”
While the 43-year-old from Mount Kisco in Westchester already got her jaw-dropping deposit back for the six-week summer program, the mom of two and full-time real estate agent is stumped about how to entertain her little darlings all summer.
“It seems like a first-world problem, but these kids have been home since March,” Goldberg says. “Camp is the highlight of Justin’s year. With the prospect of these long days, how will we get through the day till Labor Day?”
Even Sasha sympathizes with her parents, who recall her telling them, “You must be really bummed. You look forward to your time away from us, and we look forward to our time away from you.”
Over the past few days, even more camps put the kibosh on these pricey parental escape plans. The Union for Reform Judaism canceled all of its sleepaway programs, impacting 15 overnight camps, some 10,000 campers — and untold numbers of shell-shocked moms and dads. The URJ statement read in part, “Ultimately, we determined that there are simply too many risks — both known and unknown, both now and over the full summer — to hold our programs as usual.”
The “crisis management team” of CampMinder, a company concerned with camp software management, reported that of 350 camps polled — three quarters of which are residential facilities — 7 percent confirmed they’re shuttered for summer, and 9 percent said they will likely follow suit. On May 15, the American Camping Association will announce its official recommendation for its 2,500 camps.
Parents like Brett, who also has a 10-year-old son, Zack, are scrambling to come up with contingency plans that will keep both him and his kids sane this summer. So far, they’ve only come up with — GULP — an old-school sleepover with friends if it’s safe.
“The important thing is — camp is not a place. It’s an emotion, a feeling, a value,” Brett says. “And that can’t ever be taken away. You can’t cancel that.”
Experts, however, are hopeful not all is lost.
“A small group of camps were cancelled in the grand scheme of things. As of now, all the other camps haven’t made their final decision,” said Lauren Nearpass, co-founder of Summer365, a service for parents to find the best sleepaway camps and summer programs, which is fielding calls from parents searching for options under quarantine.
“People are devastated,” Nearpass says. “This is taking a toll on families. This was something they were hoping would be a respite for their kids — a light at the end of the tunnel.”
Meanwhile, Simma Levine, whose 12-year-old daughter Rebecca’s Crane Lake Camp — where fees run $3,090 to $11,225 — is sidelined in the Berkshires, chooses to keep the bad news in perspective.
“We’re not like Anne Frank — we can go outside, we have food, shelter, blankets and we have each other,” the Upper West Side mom says. “As long as we have each other, we’ll figure it out. No one has the playbook.”
— Additional reporting by Jennifer Gould Keil