Her angst is driven by the knowledge that the Chester Upland district is operating on fumes.
The district is $20 million in debt. In recent years, it lost almost half of its students - and the funding to that goes with them - to charters, and has suffered heavily from cuts in state funding. District officials say those two factors have left the school system insolvent. They say they are out of options, except a possible federal lawsuit. The Corbett administration says the district's own mismanagement is at fault and, as result, there will be no state bailout.
The schools are open only because teachers have agreed to keep working without pay.
Should that change, the parents of 3,700 students may face the unthinkable: a district that can no longer educate their children.
Rios has begun preparing for the worst. Her first option: having her son move in with relatives in a neighboring district.
"He won't get to spend much time with his family, but education is the most important thing," she said.
Other parents say they have no clue what to do if the district shuts its doors.
"I'm stunned," said Danielle Rodriguez, a school crossing guard and the mother of students at Columbus and Smedley Elementary Schools. "What are we going to do? We can't have them running in the streets; there's already a lot of violence here. It's crazy; it shouldn't come to this."
Pausing to talk as she ate lunch at the Upland Diner, Anna Jackson, who has a seventh grade son at Smedley, made a prediction.
"It will be a mess," she said. "Parents are going to lose their jobs because they can't leave their children home alone."
Her plans?
"I don't know," she said. "I don't even know what my choices are."
