I am also a parent coming on the end of a summer, and whitelisting people who _may_ contact me about my child sounds like a nightmare.

Kids survived perfectly fine in the past without their parents being available 24/7.

It seems disrespectful to my wife and the camps to refuse to be available for emergencies.

The kids that survived, survived perfectly fine.

The kids that didn't survive were buried and no longer interact with us.

Unless you as an individual are somehow more equipped to deal with emergencies than camp staff, I'm not sure being reachable would make any difference. I would hope in a real emergency, the first call would be to the appropriate emergency service regardless.

Many summer camps require that you be available to retrieve your kid if e.g. they start showing Covid symptoms. I'd love to drop them off and forget about it, believe me.

But you can still let these people contact you, just not real-time. An hour or two delay should be perfectly acceptable. When they're on camp far away, does it really matter?

these are day-camps.

I guess you could get a dual Sim phone and only give out the second number for that kind of situation.