Schools and Covid 19 (part 5) **Mod warnings in OP**

The Government could do a sort of hybrid return to school (but they won't).

I was talking to a friend who lives in the US over the Christmas break. She was reminding me of what their kids' school did last year. Parents could opt to send the kids in or keep them at home and link in via video. They had to chose for an entire period of time like half a Term ( we could do 3 or 4 weeks here). My friend and her Husband were both WFH so opted to keep the kids at home as that worked for them. Others sent the kids in. All kids in needed to wear Masks even the younger ones.

Obviously this kind of thing can't be rolled out at short notice but what really frustrates me is the all-open-as-normal or all-closed approach. No effort to try to plan out other options.

Hybrid can work for secondary but not necessarily for primary as there is a lot more than just learning at work. Here's a recent piece from WAPO about the European experience.

Must have a read. Thanks. It's just an option to be considered. Short term until 5-11 are vaccinated or this wave of Omicron subsides.

My friends' kids are both under-11 so in Elementary School in the US. Yes, it was hard at the time on both the kids and the Parents but they were both fine. They are both fully vaccinated now since end of November and they are back to school in-person today (and have been since September).

I think thats a great idea that would meet all needs and keep students and teachers safer - You'll find though in Ireland the authorities go out of there way to find the problems rather than seeing the benefits. Im guessing the dept of Ed and unions will quote GDPR, confidentiality, technology, wifi , lack of training etc etc as reasons not to do this. They wont see it as viable down to several easily solvable reasons.

Keep primary closed and open secondary schools and see how the teachers who are parent get on.

Fully agree with the above! Covid doesn't really affect kids but unfortunately a lot of teachers isolating and there are no subs to be found so the children can't be in school alone. I know this is the same in my other sectors at the moment. There are massive staff shortages and business have closed this week. One well known supermarket in Wexford has closed for the entire week due to staff shortages.

We were the same. We ended up getting a local girl to sit in with the class for a week! We had no other option. There are literally no subs to be found anywhere.

Solvable given time, money and resources. How many secondary schools could currently reliably support 30 to 40 simultaneous video streams, both on internal and external networks. How many have the audio-visual equipment to record 30 to 40 classes simultaneously? How many have the spares and technical support to do this reliably on an ongoing basis?

Given how poorly implemented equipping schools with CO2 monitors and HEPA filters has been I wouldn't have much confidence in the ability of the department to roll out the resources necessary to support hybrid learning.

I don't know the solution to this. But I really believe that starting when the Schools first closed in March 2020 and definitely latest by Summer 2020, the Dept of Education should have started properly investigating all options to continue Education for all children. They should have effectively "disaster-planned" different scenarios and different combinations of solutions to deal with the scenarios.

Prepare for the worst and hope for the best. Hope that your preparations are not needed but that they are there if needs be.

This idea of black and white - all Schools open as normal with little to no mitigations versus all Schools closed is wrong.

There were effectively no mitigations in our daughter's Primary School until recently when the masks came in. Our daughter was masked all along indoors at school and we took her off the school bus until she was fully vaccinated.

The mitigations in our son's Secondary were masks, no lockers, segregation of Year Groups and allocating Base Classrooms.

Hand sanitiser and windows open in both schools.

If proper plans were drawn up in Summer 2020, we wouldn't be here now.

That would never even get off the ground in Ireland. Do you think the unions would approve? I doubt it.

Also as mentioned there is no technology and expertise in schools to support this.

Staff are all jabbed and boosted, schools need to be open full stop, the virus is extremely low low risk to healthy children

my lad has it and it’s nothing to him a bit of a cough that’s it he’s outside playing football as I type, if parents feel the risk is too great don’t sent their children in. We must move forwards now.

Agree with you. I was just talking about Schools here but absolutely agree that "Disaster-planning" should have been carried out in Health and across the wider Public Service. We were caught out by the Pandemic in early 2020 but we should have used that experience to at least make the best possible effort not to let it happen again.

Not too sure about the practicalities of that.

Many parents would be due a tulsa visit well before the 3 weeks due to most having missed so many days already.

Its just a shame we don't have a solid online learning infrastructure in place.

Just heard on the 9PM news there, Secondary schools are doing a staggered return,

6th and 3rd as usual, back Thursday, they don't know about the rest for now.

Wondering If college will just keep shut until I finish in April.... Most classes are online now anyways...

Is that definite - ASTI planned to propose that tomorrow when they meet with the govt.