How will schools be able to go back in September?

khalessi wrote: »

The guidelines are rubbish and we will work around them.

My attitude is that I will make things work inspite of them.

Went into school yesterday to measure. I have roughly 46sqm of space.

Am I right in thinking that they want pods of 4 or possibly 6 at a push. I would need at least one group of 8 to fit them all in. 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.

Will Yam

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?

Blondini

Zahir Bitter Cellist wrote: »

It's very simple really, and comes down to the age old private business v public sector debate.

If schools were private profitable businesses then they would probably have been open since May.

Those who depend on doing their job for their livelihood will quickly look for solutions and overcome obstacles.

They don't have the luxury of waiting for a bespoke plan and handholding measures while fully earning their usual salary.

The plan would never have been good enough even if each child was shrink wrapped in sterile cling film there would still be a problem found somewhere.

I have found though in real life teachers arent represented by those on the thread here. Many just want to go back to work regardless of the plan and its apparent flaws.

It's a pretty small portion that will do anything to avoid having to go back to work.

Tighten the straps on that facemask Fringey, it's slipping.

Lillyfae

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!!

Boggles

Will Yam wrote: »

I’m sure there is.

But watch the bulk of them open on Monday week.

Well that is to be decided.

But when they do open, it will be under strict public health grounds and monitored and enforced by the Gardaí.

The water downed to an inch of it's like public health advice for schools will not be monitored and is based on "when practical".

You do understand the difference right?

Boggles wrote: »

What business sector did not get a plan with particularly focus on health and safety?

Which of these plans as you alluded to earlier were heavily laden with these phrases?

As an example, restaurants.

Where in the guidelines did it say?

Where Possible maintain social distance?

Where Practical serve a substantial meal?

Where Possible stick to a time limit?

Where Practical limit the amount indoors?

Like clockwork, you can only hold it together for so long than the jealousy veil slips and boom.

True Colors.

You are a parody of yourself at this stage.

Pg 20

Place plexiglass barriers at tills, if feasible

Provide additional pop up hand hygiene facilities if possible

Physical distancing of 2m should be maintained between tables, however if this is not possible , this can be reduced to 1 m in controlled environments

Encourage the use of contact less payment where possible, without disadvantahing older or vulnerable customers.

Where at all practical workers should provide services to only 1 group

Where possible, facilities such as toilets should not be used simultaneously

It's full of where possibles and where practical. Have you read it at all?

Deleted User wrote: »

As much as I have enjoyed refuting cheery picked studies that only pick on specific aspects and not the complete picture, unfortunately I am heading away with the family for a couple days this afternoon and won’t be on a huge amount at the weekend either I’d imagine. Might step in occasionally to address the most egregious misrepresentation of facts, but otherwise, see you next week

Ok so not cherry picked .....peer reviewed studies.
Your mixing me up with any asshole who has an opinion.
Enjoy the break.

https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1288523940046962688?s=20

God loves a trier.

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 principle is not doing thier job

Lillyfae

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.

Will Yam wrote: »

The education sector, by contrast seems to be preoccupied with finding problems.

That's a lovely anecdote but completely irrelevant.
Why did we close the schools in first place?
It wasn't to protect the teachers.

Sending thirty snotting nosed creatures into a poorly ventilated classroom with no ventilation will result in a lot of sick people and dead grannies in the wider community.

Taking sectors in isolation and saying sure the coffee shop is great, is not real or helpful.

mick087

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.

Charles Babbage

Article in New York Times (free to read) https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/29/opinion/coronavirus-schools-reopen.html
They reckon that so long as you have only 10-15 students per classroom things will work, so that should be work fine in Ireland.

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.

Will Yam

caveat emptor wrote: »

That's a lovely anecdote but completely irrelevant.
Why did we close the schools in first place?
It wasn't to protect the teachers.

Sending thirty snotting nosed creatures into a poorly ventilated classroom with no ventilation will result in a lot of sick people and dead grannies in the wider community.

Taking sectors in isolation and saying sure the coffee shop is great, is not real or helpful.

I didn’t take any sector in isolation. I acknowledge there are differences between different sectors.

I’m putting forward the observation - which you can choose to agree with or not - that the attitude in the education sector to reopening is different to the attitude in other sectors. That’s all.

ldy4mxonucwsq6

Boggles wrote: »

Which of these plans as you alluded to earlier were heavily laden with these phrases?

You might need to read those plans again so because there's plenty of ambiguous language contained there too.

Businesses have all had to make changes but there's no one size fits all due to the differing nature of various roles and premises etc.

I encounter more people indoors every day, different people every day of the week, than a teacher ever will in a classroom, my workplace has made changes but it's no means risk free or "Covid secure".

The reality is risk free does not exist and it didn't before all of this either.

Zahir Bitter Cellist wrote: »

I encounter more people indoors every day, different people every day of the week, than a teacher ever will in a classroom, my workplace has made changes but it's no means risk free or "Covid secure".

The reality is risk free does not exist and it didn't before all of this either.

How are you on here so much then if you have to encounter all these people every day?

Will Yam wrote: »

I’m putting forward the observation - which you can choose to agree with or not - that the attitude in the education sector to reopening is different to the attitude in other sectors. That’s all.

God we all have an opinion and are entitled to express it.
Again not relevant to the debate unfortunately.

Care to offer an opine on the fact that it has been discovered just yesterday that it is highly infectious via airborne transmission?

Or what this means in the context of a class room without a fvcking window?

No didn't think so.

Enjoy your day.

Zahir Bitter Cellist wrote: »

Y

I encounter more people indoors every day, different people every day of the week, than a teacher ever will in a classroom, my workplace has made changes but it's no means risk free or "Covid secure".

The reality is risk free does not exist and it didn't before all of this either.

I'm slow clapping for you as I type...

ldy4mxonucwsq6

wirelessdude01 wrote: »

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.

Does it also say any of the following:

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

Boggles

Zahir Bitter Cellist wrote: »

I encounter more people indoors every day, different people every day of the week, than a teacher ever will in a classroom, my workplace has made changes but it's no means risk free or "Covid secure".

You said you work nights?

How many people do you encounter on the night shift that would be more than a secondary school teacher, and when you say encounter what do you mean?

Also as your previously said your company makes you wear PPE.

There is no such mandate for schools.

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.

ldy4mxonucwsq6

Boggles wrote: »

You said you work nights?

How many people do you encounter on the night shift that would be more than a secondary school teacher, and when you say encounter what do you mean?

Also as your previously said your company makes you wear PPE.

There is no such mandate for schools.

I work in healthcare.

Benimar

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.

combat14

Boggles wrote: »

What business sector did not get a plan with particularly focus on health and safety?

Which of these plans as you alluded to earlier were heavily laden with these phrases?

As an example, restaurants.

Where in the guidelines did it say?

Where Possible maintain social distance?

Where Practical serve a substantial meal?

Where Possible stick to a time limit?

Where Practical limit the amount indoors?

Like clockwork, you can only hold it together for so long than the jealousy veil slips and boom.

True Colors.

You are a parody of yourself at this stage.

yes and at the moment most school returns are being planned by 1 principal who may or may not be enjoying their well earned august holiday shortly ...

so I wonder how much health and safety prep work is really being done...

Boggles

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?

Benimar wrote: »

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.

+1000% percent

Negligence is no excuse of the law.
I'll check out the class etc
If it's not safe I can't send them if as I'd be criminally negligent to my child.
I get most don't understand that.

In fact if only 80% of people send their kids we won't be long in shutting down to contain the spread.
Whereupon we'll have to go back to this step and get it right.

am_zarathustra

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.

combat14 wrote: »

yes and at the moment most school returns are being planned by 1 principal who may or may not be enjoying their well earned august holiday shortly ...

so I wonder how much health and safety prep work is really being done...

The teachers are supposed to be involved too according to the road map why are they leaving it all to the principal ?