Chiming in here to say that I’d guess the schools will want families to commit, no matter what happens next year (how they handle the fall, if there is no in person school probably is yet to be determined). If there is no in person school in the fall, perhaps the school will offer partial refunds etc but at some point there WILL be in person school. At that point, those who opted out of boarding school will find if difficult to impossible to get admitted – I’m guessing – because those classes will already be full and/or swamped with pent up demand at that point.
I’m not saying that families should accept a place, obviously that’s something for each family to decide, and depends on many factors including attractive local options. But the boarding schools will be able to fill their classes, even if they draw heavily from their wait lists. And once those classes are full, they are full.
This train of thought clearly mostly applies to schools that are highly desirable and which have lots of families that would be thrilled to get in off the wait list.