How will schools be able to go back in September?

downthemiddle · 05-07-2020 08:35AM

Jim Root wrote: »

If teachers were on the €350-a-week Covid-19 payments, they would have found a way to open the schools before now - Sunday times today

You clearly didn’t get the memo. They are going on strike to keep the schools closed. Please try and keep up.

wirelessdude01 · 05-07-2020 08:41AM

Jim Root wrote: »

If teachers were on the €350-a-week Covid-19 payments, they would have found a way to open the schools before now - Sunday times today

Ohh sweet baby Jesus. Some people just don't understand that schools and the people employed within them really have little input into these decisions ðŸ™„

Jizique · 05-07-2020 08:42AM

wirelessdude01 wrote: »

Ohh sweet baby Jesus. Some people just don't understand that schools and the people employed within them really have little input into these decisions ðŸ™„

Are the unions having an input?

downthemiddle · 05-07-2020 08:51AM

Jizique wrote: »

Are the unions having an input?

When Leo made the call from Washington to close the schools did you see an entourage of union leaders in the background?

wirelessdude01 · 05-07-2020 09:12AM

Jizique wrote: »

Are the unions having an input?

INTO were asked to make some inputs which were then ignored. If they want safe schools then they need to man up and provide some funding. The people bleating on about how Denmark can get back to school don't realise how chronically underfunded our system is compared to theirs. How education is actually valued over there.

I'll keep asking this. Do people actually stop and question why schools feel the need to ask for 'voluntary' contributions?

wirelessdude01 · 05-07-2020 09:16AM

Actually a group of primary principals have also prepared a document that shows how to open up schools pretty safely. Dept won't engage with them or acknowledge it. Money is the root of this head in the sand approach they have adopted.

Jim Root · 05-07-2020 09:18AM

If the classrooms really are empty come September because the teachers are too concerned for their own safety, as a teachers’ union leader warned a Dail committee last week, then so too should be their pay packets. Like a lot of parents, I suspect that if teachers were on the €350-a-week Covid-19 payments, they would have found a way to open the schools before now; if pubs, shops and restaurants can manage it, then so surely can schools. But with taxpayers’ money flowing steadily into teachers’ pockets, they have the luxury of insisting — as did Kieran Christie of the Association of Secondary Teachers, Ireland — that, under current medical advice, they simply will not be returning to work.

Astonishingly, the committee members sat and took this precious, exceptionalist twaddle like a bunch of mute third-years hoping they wouldn’t be asked a hard question themselves. In the UK, teachers’ unions have been accused of obstructing reopening plans and trying to terrorise parents into keeping their children away. Here, there is not a peep of criticism of those same tactics from this new administration. The only person to speak up was Mai Fanning of the National Parents Council, who told them that they’re just going to have to “step out of their comfort zones” and accept that “calculated and considered risks” will have to be taken in the interests of the nation’s children.

The implications of the unions’ strop — and I don’t believe it reflects the views of most teachers — are profound: for the profession, for pupils, and for working mothers, the adults primarily affected by these pearl-clutching vapours. On behalf of their members, for a start, the unions are declaring that teaching is not an essential service. They’re prepared to persist indefinitely with the disruption of a generation’s education, out of overplayed fears for their own safety, as if teachers were some especially vulnerable cohort who needed to be wrapped in sterilised cotton wool.

But the failure to confront them — years ago, indeed, over their long holidays and issues such as in-service training days being deducted from children’s education time rather than three-month vacations — speaks volumes about the attitude of this and previous governments to working women. They’re effectively being told they’re dispensable. If it’s a choice between pandering to the unions and throwing working mothers under a bus, obliging them to give up their jobs to facilitate “blended learning” and reduced school time, then the women will take the fall.

And there’s no point pretending it won’t be the mothers who will suffer here. If they’re able to hang on to their jobs, it will be only because they’re minimum-wage shift workers (women are over-represented in the lowest-paid jobs) who’ll be expected to put in a full night’s work and then spend their days on housework, home-schooling and keeping the peace with a houseful of bored children. Mostly, the women who will lose out will be those bringing in the second, and lower, household income which largely covered the childminders and after-school care — now unavailable or unaffordable anyway — and who will have to put their jobs on hold.

They don’t have the muscle that the unions have, so their economic and emotional sacrifices will be ignored. They’re too exhausted from four months of working from their kitchen tables, supervising studies, queueing outside supermarkets, worrying about elderly parents and managing relationships under strain from 24/7 facetime to muster the sort of threat pensioners’ posed when their medical cards were on the line years ago. Yet 91% of parents, that Dail committee heard last week, want their children back in school fully by September, and the unspoken end of that sentence is: “Even if there is a risk.”
Unlike the teachers, working parents can’t afford to indulge multiple worst-case scenarios: it’s get the kids back to school or face economic catastrophe. How much more dangerous, after all, to keep youngsters at home every second week, shuttling between carers and pals’ homes, than to have them contained in consistent environments and routines? If parents undertake to keep children out at the first whiff of a Covid-19 symptom in the household, and sanitisers and hand-washing facilities are beefed up, schools can open as normal. We have tolerated the teachers’ tantrums long enough.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/ireland/teachers-unions-cant-lecture-us-on-covid-19-nspctm69r

History Queen · 05-07-2020 09:22AM

Jim Root wrote: »

If the classrooms really are empty come September because the teachers are too concerned for their own safety, as a teachers’ union leader warned a Dail committee last week, then so too should be their pay packets. Like a lot of parents, I suspect that if teachers were on the €350-a-week Covid-19 payments, they would have found a way to open the schools before now; if pubs, shops and restaurants can manage it, then so surely can schools. But with taxpayers’ money flowing steadily into teachers’ pockets, they have the luxury of insisting — as did Kieran Christie of the Association of Secondary Teachers, Ireland — that, under current medical advice, they simply will not be returning to work.

Astonishingly, the committee members sat and took this precious, exceptionalist twaddle like a bunch of mute third-years hoping they wouldn’t be asked a hard question themselves. In the UK, teachers’ unions have been accused of obstructing reopening plans and trying to terrorise parents into keeping their children away. Here, there is not a peep of criticism of those same tactics from this new administration. The only person to speak up was Mai Fanning of the National Parents Council, who told them that they’re just going to have to “step out of their comfort zones” and accept that “calculated and considered risks” will have to be taken in the interests of the nation’s children.

The implications of the unions’ strop — and I don’t believe it reflects the views of most teachers — are profound: for the profession, for pupils, and for working mothers, the adults primarily affected by these pearl-clutching vapours. On behalf of their members, for a start, the unions are declaring that teaching is not an essential service. They’re prepared to persist indefinitely with the disruption of a generation’s education, out of overplayed fears for their own safety, as if teachers were some especially vulnerable cohort who needed to be wrapped in sterilised cotton wool.

But the failure to confront them — years ago, indeed, over their long holidays and issues such as in-service training days being deducted from children’s education time rather than three-month vacations — speaks volumes about the attitude of this and previous governments to working women. They’re effectively being told they’re dispensable. If it’s a choice between pandering to the unions and throwing working mothers under a bus, obliging them to give up their jobs to facilitate “blended learning” and reduced school time, then the women will take the fall.

And there’s no point pretending it won’t be the mothers who will suffer here. If they’re able to hang on to their jobs, it will be only because they’re minimum-wage shift workers (women are over-represented in the lowest-paid jobs) who’ll be expected to put in a full night’s work and then spend their days on housework, home-schooling and keeping the peace with a houseful of bored children. Mostly, the women who will lose out will be those bringing in the second, and lower, household income which largely covered the childminders and after-school care — now unavailable or unaffordable anyway — and who will have to put their jobs on hold.

They don’t have the muscle that the unions have, so their economic and emotional sacrifices will be ignored. They’re too exhausted from four months of working from their kitchen tables, supervising studies, queueing outside supermarkets, worrying about elderly parents and managing relationships under strain from 24/7 facetime to muster the sort of threat pensioners’ posed when their medical cards were on the line years ago. Yet 91% of parents, that Dail committee heard last week, want their children back in school fully by September, and the unspoken end of that sentence is: “Even if there is a risk.”
Unlike the teachers, working parents can’t afford to indulge multiple worst-case scenarios: it’s get the kids back to school or face economic catastrophe. How much more dangerous, after all, to keep youngsters at home every second week, shuttling between carers and pals’ homes, than to have them contained in consistent environments and routines? If parents undertake to keep children out at the first whiff of a Covid-19 symptom in the household, and sanitisers and hand-washing facilities are beefed up, schools can open as normal. We have tolerated the teachers’ tantrums long enough.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/ireland/teachers-unions-cant-lecture-us-on-covid-19-nspctm69r

What do you think is unreasonable about wanting PPE/hand washing facilities/extra staff so that schools can be compliant with the public health guidelines issued to them?

Edit:also many teachers are working parents too. We are allowed to procreate as unreasonable as I'm sure you find that.

wirelessdude01 · 05-07-2020 09:31AM

Jim Root wrote: »

If the classrooms really are empty come September because the teachers are too concerned for their own safety, as a teachers’ union leader warned a Dail committee last week, then so too should be their pay packets. Like a lot of parents, I suspect that if teachers were on the €350-a-week Covid-19 payments, they would have found a way to open the schools before now; if pubs, shops and restaurants can manage it, then so surely can schools. But with taxpayers’ money flowing steadily into teachers’ pockets, they have the luxury of insisting — as did Kieran Christie of the Association of Secondary Teachers, Ireland — that, under current medical advice, they simply will not be returning to work.

Astonishingly, the committee members sat and took this precious, exceptionalist twaddle like a bunch of mute third-years hoping they wouldn’t be asked a hard question themselves. In the UK, teachers’ unions have been accused of obstructing reopening plans and trying to terrorise parents into keeping their children away. Here, there is not a peep of criticism of those same tactics from this new administration. The only person to speak up was Mai Fanning of the National Parents Council, who told them that they’re just going to have to “step out of their comfort zones” and accept that “calculated and considered risks” will have to be taken in the interests of the nation’s children.

The implications of the unions’ strop — and I don’t believe it reflects the views of most teachers — are profound: for the profession, for pupils, and for working mothers, the adults primarily affected by these pearl-clutching vapours. On behalf of their members, for a start, the unions are declaring that teaching is not an essential service. They’re prepared to persist indefinitely with the disruption of a generation’s education, out of overplayed fears for their own safety, as if teachers were some especially vulnerable cohort who needed to be wrapped in sterilised cotton wool.

But the failure to confront them — years ago, indeed, over their long holidays and issues such as in-service training days being deducted from children’s education time rather than three-month vacations — speaks volumes about the attitude of this and previous governments to working women. They’re effectively being told they’re dispensable. If it’s a choice between pandering to the unions and throwing working mothers under a bus, obliging them to give up their jobs to facilitate “blended learning” and reduced school time, then the women will take the fall.

And there’s no point pretending it won’t be the mothers who will suffer here. If they’re able to hang on to their jobs, it will be only because they’re minimum-wage shift workers (women are over-represented in the lowest-paid jobs) who’ll be expected to put in a full night’s work and then spend their days on housework, home-schooling and keeping the peace with a houseful of bored children. Mostly, the women who will lose out will be those bringing in the second, and lower, household income which largely covered the childminders and after-school care — now unavailable or unaffordable anyway — and who will have to put their jobs on hold.

They don’t have the muscle that the unions have, so their economic and emotional sacrifices will be ignored. They’re too exhausted from four months of working from their kitchen tables, supervising studies, queueing outside supermarkets, worrying about elderly parents and managing relationships under strain from 24/7 facetime to muster the sort of threat pensioners’ posed when their medical cards were on the line years ago. Yet 91% of parents, that Dail committee heard last week, want their children back in school fully by September, and the unspoken end of that sentence is: “Even if there is a risk.”
Unlike the teachers, working parents can’t afford to indulge multiple worst-case scenarios: it’s get the kids back to school or face economic catastrophe. How much more dangerous, after all, to keep youngsters at home every second week, shuttling between carers and pals’ homes, than to have them contained in consistent environments and routines? If parents undertake to keep children out at the first whiff of a Covid-19 symptom in the household, and sanitisers and hand-washing facilities are beefed up, schools can open as normal. We have tolerated the teachers’ tantrums long enough.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/ireland/teachers-unions-cant-lecture-us-on-covid-19-nspctm69r

Sweet Jesus. With the current guidelines we wouldn't be open to open fully. Wouldn't cost much but easier to just blame us the teachers for the mess that is years of chronic under funding and resourcing of education.

Elliejo · 05-07-2020 09:33AM

"If parents undertake to keep children out at the first whiff of a Covid-19 symptom in the household, and sanitisers and hand-washing facilities are beefed up, schools can open as normal."

And therein lies exactly what schools are looking for to be implemented. But the DOE won't issue a directive or funds to ensure it can happen. Schools are struggling financially already and just don't have the money to buy the very basics so without funding they cannot purchase sanitisers, install enough hand-washing facilities etc.

Millem · 05-07-2020 09:36AM

It seems to me the problem lies with the students needing to social distance.
If they didn’t need to then everyone could go back.
Who is making the decisions on social distancing....unions or the government?

wirelessdude01 · 05-07-2020 09:38AM

Elliejo wrote: »

"If parents undertake to keep children out at the first whiff of a Covid-19 symptom in the household, and sanitisers and hand-washing facilities are beefed up, schools can open as normal."

In the guidelines that were issued there is mention of isolation room(s) for students and staff that display symptoms during the school day but no mention of how these are to be facilitated in schools where there are no empty room(s) or how these rooms are to be staffed?

Money, money, money is at the heart of all of this. No commitment to funding anything and then people under why we as a sector have concerns. Our concerns are for our school environment and the people connected to them.

The Wordress · 05-07-2020 09:43AM

As a teacher and mother, I look forward to returning to school in September. I think for everyones benefit, we should be returning at full whack in the safest way possible. The longer children are away from school, the harder it will be for everyone. I don't know any of my teaching colleagues or friends who don't want a full return to school.

I don't know what my Unions stance is on it but I would expect that they are trying to get DES to fund basic hygiene equipment which isn't asking too much. I spent 3k of my own money on basic equipment trying to start a new classroom lasy year so I wouldn't bank on it :rolleyes:

iamwhoiam · 05-07-2020 09:58AM

The major problem here is the Government lack of willingness to invest in Education or early learning . They flung money at the health services and rightly so at a time of crisis . They flung money at Citywest hotel and rightly so in a crises . They flung millions at testing centre and rightly so

But what they failed to do was see the crisis looming in schools . They failed to see that teachers are essential workers , they failed to see that education is vital and failed to put money in ensuring this essential resource was defended

Parents , teachers and most of all children have been let down badly by Government policy not seeing education as an essential service for our country

Millem · 05-07-2020 10:03AM

I wish schools would just come out and say our classrooms are x in size so only y number of children can attend.

If social distancing is essential for students the government should be working on a budget to provide for extra teachers and opening the school for longer hours. I see some hairdressers were opened at midnight and have extended their opening hours to cope with the demand.

wirelessdude01 · 05-07-2020 10:16AM

Millem wrote: »

I wish schools would just come out and say our classrooms are x in size so only y number of children can attend.

If social distancing is essential for students the government should be working on a budget to provide for extra teachers and opening the school for longer hours. I see some hairdressers were opened at midnight and have extended their opening hours to cope with the demand.

Money, money, money.

Hubertj · 05-07-2020 10:20AM

wirelessdude01 wrote: »

Money, money, money.

That’s what it really comes down to. Unions holding the public to ransom for a pay increase. And this comes after them having months off work on full pay. Quite sickening really.

wirelessdude01 · 05-07-2020 10:24AM

Hubertj wrote: »

That’s what it really comes down to. Unions holding the public to ransom for a pay increase. And this comes after them having months off work on full pay. Quite sickening really.

Was it Ivan or Ciara that you got that nugget from?

The Wordress · 05-07-2020 10:26AM

Hubertj wrote: »

That’s what it really comes down to. Unions holding the public to ransom for a pay increase. And this comes after them having months off work on full pay. Quite sickening really.

Janey Mack. What the! I want my basic increments up the scale, as I deserve for my service, experience and qualifications. I am not demanding a pay increase and I would rather not have pay cuts because I pay enough tax and I'm still doing the same job if not harder in last few months and for what is coming in September.

Millem · 05-07-2020 10:31AM

Hubertj wrote: »

That’s what it really comes down to. Unions holding the public to ransom for a pay increase. And this comes after them having months off work on full pay. Quite sickening really.

What pay increase are you talking about?
Extra teachers need to be hired........

History Queen · 05-07-2020 10:35AM

Hubertj wrote: »

That’s what it really comes down to. Unions holding the public to ransom for a pay increase. And this comes after them having months off work on full pay. Quite sickening really.

Where are the teaching unions looking for a pay increase? Stop trolling.

Edit:you've had this explained to you already but refuse to accept. Teachers haveno problem going back to schools according to public health guidelines. These public health guidelines make it IMPOSSIBLE for all students to be in school all of the time unless extra money is spent hiring more teachers and staff/providing more classrooms/providing hand washing facilities/sanitizer

Millem · 05-07-2020 10:41AM

History Queen wrote: »

Where are the teaching unions looking for a pay increase? Stop trolling.

Maybe it’s the 2% restoration on the 1st of October? The one ALL public sector employees will be getting.

deiseindublin · 05-07-2020 11:00AM

Teachers - please stop feeding the Trolls. And if they're not trolls, they're just too simple to bother with. They don't understand PS pay scales or how schools are governed, also apparent when it's explained ad nauseum they don't actually want to know.

This thread is supposed to be about HOW schools can be opened, but has evolved into a "teachers are baddies" thread. It's mind numbingly repetitive across boards, so just ignore.

average_runner · 05-07-2020 11:02AM

wirelessdude01 wrote: »

In the guidelines that were issued there is mention of isolation room(s) for students and staff that display symptoms during the school day but no mention of how these are to be facilitated in schools where there are no empty room(s) or how these rooms are to be staffed?

Money, money, money is at the heart of all of this. No commitment to funding anything and then people under why we as a sector have concerns. Our concerns are for our school environment and the people connected to them.

The staff room can be converted and use temporary room seperators to create the rooms.
Always a teacher in the staff room so they can keep an eye on the students if any in them.

downthemiddle · 05-07-2020 11:08AM

Hubertj wrote: »

That’s what it really comes down to. Unions holding the public to ransom for a pay increase. And this comes after them having months off work on full pay. Quite sickening really.

How prescient of you.
I’m going to let you into a secret but please don’t spread it. Covid 19 was created in a community college in Laois, thus dispelling the myth that nothing ever comes out of Laois. It was part of a junior cert science experiment that went wrong (typical teacher).
Once the teacher realised what had been created they shipped it out to their friend in Wuhan. Their friend captured a bat and injected it with the virus before going on to sell it in a wet market. All this resulted in a global pandemic. Trump was right, the virus was created in a lab.
The lengths some people will go to in order to manufacture a pay rise!!!

wirelessdude01 · 05-07-2020 11:10AM

average_runner wrote: »

The staff room can be converted and use temporary room seperators to create the rooms.
Always a teacher in the staff room so they can keep an eye on the students if any in them.

What rooms are the dividers going to be used in? In any case there are no empty rooms in our school. Staffroom is already in use by the SET team during class time.

wirelessdude01 · 05-07-2020 11:12AM

downthemiddle wrote: »

How prescient of you.
I’m going to let you into a secret but please don’t spread it. Covid 19 was created in a community college in Laois, thus dispelling the myth that nothing ever comes out of Laois. It was part of a junior cert science experiment that went wrong (typical teacher).
Once the teacher realised what had been created they shipped it out to their friend in Wuhan. Their friend captured a bat and injected it with the virus before going on to sell it in a wet market. All this resulted in a global pandemic. Trump was right, the virus was created in a lab.
The lengths some people will go to in order to manufacture a pay rise!!!

Or the lengths we will go to inorder to teach in our jocks from home ðŸ˜‚

average_runner · 05-07-2020 11:14AM

wirelessdude01 wrote: »

What rooms are the dividers going to be used in? In any case there are no empty rooms in our school. Staffroom is already in use by the SET team during class time.

How about the principle and vice principal office?

combat14 · 05-07-2020 11:17AM

my partners office (500 workers) will only have 15% of staff returning much later in the year .. they are having absolutely no rush back.. and even later in the year about December they will only let another 15% back ....
until things are clear with covid 19 they are working from home

how can teachers be expected to work for hours each day in small classrooms packed with 30+ students with no proper staff room to go to etc.

it's a court case waiting to happen when someone gets sick

Orchids · 05-07-2020 11:25AM

combat14 wrote: »

my partners office (500 workers) will only have 15% of staff returning much later in the year .. they are having absolutely no rush back.. and even later in the year about December they will only let another 15% back ....
until things are clear with covid 19 they are working from home

how can teachers be expected to work for hours each day in small classrooms packed with 30+ students with no proper staff room to go to etc.

it's a court case waiting to happen when someone gets sick

Hazmat suit for all staff????

How will schools be able to go back in September?

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