How will schools be able to go back in September?

kids are made wear masks going into every other sort of premises in the current climate, whats the issue with getting them to do it in schools

Icyseanfitz wrote: »

kids are made wear masks going into every other sort of premises in the current climate, whats the issue with getting them to do it in schools

Kids under 13 don't have to wear masks in shops, under the legislation.

And the difference is that kids don't spend 5 hours in the shop or the hairdresser trying to talk to friends and teachers.

seamus wrote: »

Kids under 13 don't have to wear masks in shops, under the legislation.

And the difference is that kids don't spend 5 hours in the shop or the hairdresser trying to talk to friends and teachers.

which would make them even more of a priority imo, every other sector is being offered at least this level of safety, to omit education because it will be hard in practise is bull****

Anyone watch the John Boyle interview on Virgin Media’s 12:30 news?

Lots of plamásing about individual packs, no shared materials etc - I can’t see that being sustainable in an infant class. Have lost a lot of respect for him over the past few weeks.

JRant wrote: »

By the DES?

By our principal

seamus wrote: »

Keyword there being "reasonably". Determining what's reasonable involves not just the level of effort required, but also the reward in doing so.

If the risk of viral transmission is very low, and the effort to do something (such as getting kids to wear masks) is high, then perhaps it's not a reasonable measure?

If you want to divide children into six-child "pods", then you need to double or triple your teaching staff.

If you want to do partial weeks, then society as a whole has to be restructured to account for kids not being in school five days a week.

But since the risk of transmission is very low, then none of these suggestions are reasonable for younger students.

Which leads to the conclusion that having younger kids go back to school without masks and distancing but with some of the other hygiene methods in place, is to "eliminate the risk we reasonably can".

Even with the alleged measures to be proposed today, schools are going to be considerably safer places than they were last September when there were practically zero hygiene practices in place.

I think the proposals for national schools are decent.

The real problem arises with secondary schools.

The two are not the same.

wirelessdude01 wrote: »

By our principal

Well, that's a nonsense. Nobody should have to pay for them in schools if that's the policy they are going to lay out.

titan18 wrote: »

Only fair that they put something towards it imo. It's for their and their kids safety like.

Why should someone else pay for their masks

It's another cost. Someone pointed out that you can get a box of 50 for €25. That's all well and good, but if you have kids at school using 2 masks a day, then that's 366 masks for this school year.

Even at our 50 for €25 rates, you're talking €180 per child on masks alone for the school year. Multiply by 3 kids at school, and that's €550. Plenty of parents find it tough to dig out €100 for school uniforms, let alone €200 for masks.

Sure, you have reusable masks, but who's going to police that? Soon enough the majority of kids will just wear whatever mask they can lay their hands on, nobody will be arsed washing new masks every day. And then you may as well have no masks.

On the other hand if the DES buys a couple of hundred million masks, they'll get them for pennies apiece, you distribute them to schools and then you can be reasonably sure that anyone wearing a mask is wearing a fresh one from stock. Because why wouldn't they? Make a routine of it, dispose of your mask on the way out a door, pick up a clean one on the way in.

JRant wrote: »

If they are to be mandatory then of course the DES should pay for them. Why wouldn't they?

Why ? Uniforms are mandatory and people buy their own ?
I am stunned to hear people thinking they cant buy a mask to wear .

seamus wrote: »

It's another cost. Someone pointed out that you can get a box of 50 for €25. That's all well and good, but if you have kids at school using 2 masks a day, then that's 366 masks for this school year.

Even at our 50 for €25 rates, you're talking €180 per child on masks alone for the school year. Multiply by 3 kids at school, and that's €550. Plenty of parents find it tough to dig out €100 for school uniforms, let alone €200 for masks.

Sure, you have reusable masks, but who's going to police that? Soon enough the majority of kids will just wear whatever mask they can lay their hands on, nobody will be arsed washing new masks every day. And then you may as well have no masks.

On the other hand if the DES buys a couple of hundred million masks, they'll get them for pennies apiece, you distribute them to schools and then you can be reasonably sure that anyone wearing a mask is wearing a fresh one from stock. Because why wouldn't they? Make a routine of it, dispose of your mask on the way out a door, pick up a clean one on the way in.

I bought a pack of 3 reusable ones for a fiver the other day. Get 5 of those and then you are sorted for school for the year. Actually get 6 so you have a few spares if/when they go missing fall apart. Really isn't that great a cost in the grand scheme of things.

seamus wrote: »

The effectiveness of masks diminishes with time anyway.

They are effective at reducing spread for the first hour or two, after which their effectiveness reduces quite seriously.

Thus it makes little sense to require masks when kids will spend 4+ hours together, but perfect sense to don the masks on busses and when leaving the classroom.

So unless the guidance will include a requirement for kids to bring 3 masks to school with them every day and change them regularly, and have them washed and ready to go the next day, then wearing a mask in the classroom is of little use.

Especially when we already know the covid risk for kids to be very low.

The risk of transmitting CoViD-19 is the same as an adult, if not greater (for 10 years old and upwards, possibly lower for younger children but the data is inconclusive) according to S. Korean study of over 60,000 people.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/18/health/coronavirus-children-schools.html

Starting from a low base of active cases in the community will buy time but schools will risk becoming a source of wider outbreaks if proper public health measures are not put in place to stop transmission.

Allowing facemasks to be optional in an environment where the risk of transmission is higher than other locations where facemasks are mandatory makes no sense.

Younger people may usually have less severe symptoms but should we be playing Russian roulette with their health because it's difficult or inconvenient to do things right?

seamus wrote: »

These are fair points, but they differ from masks. Uniforms you don't have to wash on a daily basis. Two of them get you through the week with no bother, and there's no public health issue with that (usually!).

And of course clothes you otherwise wear all the time anyway. Masks you don't and won't. My kids have one mask each and that's all we need. Are we saying that we should have as many masks for our kids as we do socks & knickers?

Even then it still differs; we don't send kids to school with a change of clothes and if they get their jumper dirty halfway through the day they just take it off and soldier on. Masks absolutely have to be changed during the day, and kids without them sent home.

In many ways it is similar. But in the ways that actually matter - i.e. reducing viral spread - it's very different. It's a much bigger effort, which must be balanced against how necessary it actually is.

It sounds like you have your mind set, and you're making up arguments.
You have tha answer in your post: match the number of socks with the number of masks. Change and wash them together. The added expense is nothing compared to everything else related to school.

Cordell wrote: »

It sounds like you have your mind set, and you're making up arguments.
You have tha answer in your post: match the number of socks with the number of masks. Change and wash them together. The added expense is nothing compared to everything else related to school.

And the ancillary stuff? Making sure kids have their masks on properly, making sure they stay on properly, making kids change them during the day, and then having to call up parents to collect a child who has invariable forgotten their second mask?

Now consider what you're actually trying to achieve. Are you trying to get a five year old to wear a mask for the sake of wearing a mask, or are you trying to reduce the spread of a virus?

Because the tranmissions risk is very low for that five year old, and you're punishing him and sending him home over a mask that he doesn't really need to wear.

I don't have my mind set, I'm trying to get people to see the bigger picture here. It's really easy to get bogged down into "everyone wear masks, all the time", and agressively pouncing on it, while forgetting the original intention of the exercise.

What do we gain by introducing a whole new framework of rules for kids under 10? Very little, practically nothing.

For kids over 10, the mask issue can be offset by enforcing social distancing. Maybe this is unrealistic. Maybe schools will be allowed to insist on masks as school policy if they don't feel they can distance.

"All the masks, all the time" is an easy mantra to jump on, but if you get too obsessed with it, you can't see the wood for the trees.

iamwhoiam wrote: »

Why ? Uniforms are mandatory and people buy their own ?
I am stunned to hear people thinking they cant buy a mask to wear .

Does it have to match the school uniform and have the school crest on it?