How will schools be able to go back in September? (Continued)

newuser99999 wrote: »

Better than having everything online like we will for college, oh and the pleasure of paying €3000 for it.

At college level you should be well capable of self directed learning without having the hand held. Or is it Arts and farts? lol

Spent a good portion of the night on the phone consoling one of my friends from a school I worked in a few years ago, who was after having an asthma/panic attack and thought she had some chest pain (she determined after a short time that she was just panicking. They've been completely cocooning for five months except for her taking the odd trip in to organise her classroom in accordance with the guidelines).

The reason for this is that some time after midnight, she received an email from Medmark saying:

In our opinion [name] falls into the High Risk Group, but not the Very High Risk (Extremely Vulnerable) Group

• According to current HSE guidelines, this employee may attend work if it is not possible to work from home but with social distancing - and hygiene measures in place

Current information indicates that around 25% of the Irish adult population are in a higher risk
group, potentially impacting on workplace operational requirements and the need to provide continuity of work.

It is a management decision, based on an appropriate risk assessment, to determine whether the above measures are in place and whether additional precautions, including PPE, could further mitigate the risk.

The final decision for this employee’s deployment therefore rests with the employer.

Aside from receiving the email in the middle of the night, she was absolutely certain that she was going to be working from home, because the guidelines stated that high risk employees could provide support remotely, for example, for high risk students who couldn't attend school safely. Her consultant had sent reports that her respiratory issues are not well controlled and she has a condition that causes high blood pressure.

Eventually (literally hours trying to catch her breath and stop the panic attack) managed to calm herself but the stress of it must be unimaginable based on her reaction. She never had a panic attack before, not even when she's had asthma attacks which hospitalised her. She has a five year old, extremely high risk due to recent operation, he obviously won't be attending school though he is due to start and is enrolled. I'd imagine she was very glad he wasn't awake during that. She didn't want to wake her husband as he's wfh this morning.

Husband can take care of their son but she's going to have to isolate from them both if she goes into school. She's waiting on the finalisation of a different post she actually successfully applied for (last December, but the hiring process has been painfully slow because of everything) so the prospect of that helped her to put things in perspective... Even then, I felt that hers is an unenviable position to be in and many teachers won't have any fallback in the back of their heads. At the end of the call, she categorically told me that she was not taking the risk even if the other job falls through. She said they would have to figure the money out but her family's health comes first.

Her (rural) school management think they're doing everything right in their plans, but a cursory glance shows it's a disaster. Shared transport drop them in to the school from miles around (45m journeys for some). First thing, 100 students are in assembly hall with no masks and under 1m between them. The usual streamed SEN and resource classes will take place throughout the day, thus bursting the "pods" (of 25-30, but in two very small rooms and even smaller prefabs outside), no SD posible. Principal has stated that to wear masks, staff require a medical cert.

As for the physical building, the windows don't open, there are no sinks or toilet facilities in classrooms, one shared toilet between 30 staff and the heating routinely breaks, leaving them absolutely freezing as the building doesn't get a lot of sun. The solution to no heating when I worked there was to put several classes into the same room to try and generate heat. I hope they won't be doing that this year.

Anyway off I go into my home office to begin my day's work... I feel incredibly guilty that some people are being put in the above situation. I reckon plans are not going to get the chance to materialise at all but putting people through the stress and trauma my buddy went through last night is criminal.