How will schools be able to go back in September?

Boggles wrote: »

There is literally a publican on the news every night whinging about not having a clue what to do.

I’m sure there is.

But watch the bulk of them open on Monday week.

And as for the news, however would RTÉ fill their schedules without ferreting out whingers in all walks of life?

wirelessdude01 wrote: »

Principal was also there and stuck her head in. When I explained my quandary, her reply was just pile them in as the govt don't care about us, the children and our/their families.

DO.NOT.LET.THAT.SLIDE.

Report her to the TC, BoM, DoE. This is exactly what I was referring to yesterday!!

Lillyfae wrote: »

DO.NOT.LET.THAT.SLIDE.

Report her to the TC, BoM, DoE. This is exactly what I was referring to yesterday!!

What are you on about?

wirelessdude01 wrote: »

What are you on about?

Your principal has told you to break the guidelines, rather than trying to come up with any solution be that requesting resources or feeding it back to the DoE. She has told you to put yourself, the children and parents at risk. I said yesterday that not bothering to even try to do this safely (parents, teachers, whoever) would ensure that the schools will become breeding grounds for the virus.

Schools will need to reopen.
We carn't go on like this.
I was in the city centre yesterday and its like a ghost town this is not sustainable.
I admit i dont have any answers to this but i don't want us to end up on rations.

Lillyfae wrote: »

Your principal has told you to break the guidelines, rather than trying to come up with any solution be that requesting resources or feeding it back to the DoE. She has told you to put yourself, the children and parents at risk. I said yesterday that not bothering to even try to do this safely (parents, teachers, whoever) would ensure that the schools will become breeding grounds for the virus.

The guidelines aren't practical. The guidelines tell us to send the overflow to a different room where they will follow the class on a livestream. We have ZERO spare capacity and I don't know of any primary schools that happen to have spare teachers just hanging around looking to 'mind' said overflow.

We estimate with our rooms and numbers that we would have 4 from 6th, 5 from 5th, 3 from 4th and 8 from 3rd as overflow.

Zahir Bitter Cellist wrote: »

Does it also say any of the following:

"if available", "where possible", "where practical".

So that leaves the principal in the situation where we have to pile them in. The only difference really in last year's layout and this year's layout is that I have no walk around space and will have to teach from my desk. Not my style but I'll have to change and adapt.

Full disclosure, I'm a lecturer, not a teacher, but do have 2 kids in Primary School - in case anyone wants to accuse me of being a 'whiny' teacher!

I walked past a shop in town last week. There was a notice on the door saying there was a limit of 20 people allowed in the shop at any one time due to health guidelines. At a guess I'd say the shop was the size of a full size football pitch, bigger if anything.

This shop is open because it is adhering to guidelines, not taking the attitude of trying to fit the 'normal' amount of customers in - its a discount store so would usually be fairly full, certainly far more than 20 people. They sacrifice footfall for safety.

The difference with schools is that the approach is to sacrifice safety for footfall. All students are to return to class but a lot of schools don't have either they physical space or teachers (in a lot of cases neither) to do this in line with proper social distancing.

If proper SD was the priority then I'd say teachers would be back in without complaint - however, to do this, students would not be in full time. This isn't politically expedient, so teachers and students are being put in an impossible situation by the politicians.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. I'd rather my kids went back part time in a safe environment, than full time under the proposed approach.

Zahir Bitter Cellist wrote: »

I work in healthcare.

I didn't ask you where you work, healthcare encompasses a wide range of activities, some which would have very limited interactions with other humans.

But since you volunteered what do you do in the healthcare sector?

I am fine with the guidelines as far as public health is concerned, I expected nothing better from the Department and I hope teacher sin indivual schools make sure to elect a strong person as the Aide or Liason and that they insist on everything being enforced strictly by management. It'll be more important how the unions approach schools where they have 35 kids in an unsafe room than anything else.

With regards to other places opening, hospitals had staff pulled from across the health services, Aldi/lidl/tescos etc were flat out hiring and paying overtime to keep staffing level sufficient, we made private hospitals public, we flew planes to china, guards were brought out of Templemore overnight to be on the street (the very quiet streets).....the issue in teaching is we were smack bang in the middle of a hiring crisis. I don't know a school in Dublin that has got every teacher they needed in the right subjects at Post Primary in years. We are looking for an Irish teacher, full time, for years.....no chance. We have two maths teachers really and about 10 english.

These guidelines require staffing, there are none of the suggestions the government have come up with even vaguely address this. People who jobsharing are overwhelmingly at home with young or sick children or have taken on a caring role for an elderly family member or are ill themselves. We will be lucky if theses teachers come back at all never mind come back full time. The registered teachers (2000) currently not teaching are probably in another industry or, I suspect more likely, abroad. They are not coming home, its just a pain to do the paperwork for the teaching council so it's easier to pay your 65 every year to stay on it.I would put serious money in their being less teachers in the classroom in November (after the october retirements) than there were this last year. I don't know anyone in a urban school who disagrees with me. This has been coming for 6 years, the solutions have been staring us in the face and nothing was done.

I also know a number of teachers who will sign of sick due to preexisting conditions and pregnancy. If there was a coordinated approach to supporting kids who have to stay at home these teachers would be happy to do that. The Department literally could have just gone to vsware, asked for a fake school to be set up, have half an hour or hour blocks. Input your staff and students and generate a timetable. Schools would have the information readily available. This is not rocket science and this technology is available! Students at home would get consistent help, and subject specific help at post primary. Instead the kids will try and do homework fro a class they weren't in and the staff will be sitting at home doing nothing.

The lack of ambition or vision in this document is the issue. Once again the department have produced a wordy document, not saying very much and dependent on school making it work with local arrangements. We will, but the students really deserve better and so does the state.