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Schools closed until March/April? (part 4) **Mod warning in OP 22/01**

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Comments

  • #6722
    SusanC10
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,432 ✭✭✭SusanC10


    What about Secondary aged Kids - do they wear masks ?


  • #6723
    Lillyfae
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,858 ✭✭✭Lillyfae


    Sammy2012 wrote: »
    Parents don't come in to schools here either but all staff were wearing masks and we had to inform parents of our prevention measures before reopening. Strange that you don't know what's going on inside the building. As a parent I'd want to know what the staff were doing to keep my children safe.

    We do know, they have told us- are you suggesting that I would send my children somewhere unsafe? That is a personal attack no matter how you try and dress it up. Parent bashing, anyone? They're using pods, screens, paying more attention to cleaning, no books, extra sanitising stations and no-one is allowed into the building if they're sick or if they don't need to be there. Masks aren't mandatory at primary school level.


  • #6724
    Lillyfae
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,858 ✭✭✭Lillyfae


    SusanC10 wrote: »
    What about Secondary aged Kids - do they wear masks ?

    Yes, mandatory for children over 12 in public buildings (ie supermarkets) and for everyone in secondary schools


  • #6725
    khalessi
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,216 ✭✭✭khalessi


    Lillyfae wrote: »
    Not outside, but like I said we don't go inside so I don't know. When we're doing the creche pickup they're not.
    Lillyfae wrote: »
    We do know, they have told us- are you suggesting that I would send my children somewhere unsafe? That is a personal attack no matter how you try and dress it up. Parent bashing, anyone? They're using pods, screens, paying more attention to cleaning, no books, extra sanitising stations and no-one is allowed into the building if they're sick or if they don't need to be there. Masks aren't mandatory at primary school level.

    How can it be a personal attack if you just said you didnt know? It is a comment on the difference between Ireland and Holland.


  • #6726
    Sammy2012
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,319 ✭✭✭Sammy2012


    Lillyfae wrote: »
    We do know, they have told us- are you suggesting that I would send my children somewhere unsafe? That is a personal attack no matter how you try and dress it up. Parent bashing, anyone? They're using pods, screens, paying more attention to cleaning, no books, extra sanitising stations and no-one is allowed into the building if they're sick or if they don't need to be there. Masks aren't mandatory at primary school level.

    I'm not personally attacking anyone. You said you didn't know what happens inside the school building and your kids were too young to ask. And I'm definitely not saying your sending your children anywhere unsafe. The things your school are doing are all the same as we had in place before Christmas except the staff were wearing masks and we had informed the parents of this. That's all I said. With the exception of books. We were using books.


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  • #6727
    Lillyfae
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,858 ✭✭✭Lillyfae


    khalessi wrote: »
    How can it be a personal attack if you just said you didnt know? It is a comment on the difference between Ireland and Holland.

    I said I didn't know if they are wearing masks in the building because it is not mandatory and I don't go inside the building. No-one will stop them from wearing masks. I don't know if they are wearing masks when inside. The poster outright said I would send my children to school without caring if they were talking reasonable precautions to ensure safety. It was a disgusting comment.

    Not to mention that in the whole time the school has been open since May, there has not been 1 case in a child or a teacher.


  • #6728
    khalessi
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,216 ✭✭✭khalessi


    Lillyfae wrote: »
    I said I didn't know if they are wearing masks in the building because it is not mandatory and I don't go inside the building. No-one will stop them from wearing masks. I don't know if they are wearing masks when inside. The poster outright said I would send my children to school without caring if they were talking reasonable precautions to ensure safety. It was a disgusting comment.

    Not to mention that in the whole time the school has been open since May, there has not been 1 case in a child or a teacher.

    still isnt a personal attack


  • #6729
    Sammy2012
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,319 ✭✭✭Sammy2012


    [quote the teachers and children are wearing masks, we just don't know and our 2 are too young to be asking about it.)

    That was what you said.


  • #6730
    Lillyfae
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,858 ✭✭✭Lillyfae


    Sammy2012 wrote: »
    Strange that you don't know what's going on inside the building. As a parent I'd want to know what the staff were doing to keep my children safe.
    Sammy2012 wrote: »
    And I'm definitely not saying your sending your children anywhere unsafe.

    *You're just alluding to it.


  • #6731
    Sammy2012
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,319 ✭✭✭Sammy2012


    Lillyfae wrote: »
    *You're just alluding to it.

    poster outright said I would send my children to school without caring if they were talking reasonable precautions to ensure safety

    I said no such thing as what you said above. All I said was that I would want to know if the staff were wearing masks or not!


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  • #6732
    Lillyfae
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,858 ✭✭✭Lillyfae


    Sammy2012 wrote: »
    poster outright said I would send my children to school without caring if they were talking reasonable precautions to ensure safety

    I said no such thing as what you said above. All I said was that I would want to know if the staff were wearing masks or not!

    And I said that they don't have to, but they can, so I don't know- that is not at all the same thing as "not knowing what staff are doing to keep my child safe".


  • #6733
    Sammy2012
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,319 ✭✭✭Sammy2012


    Lillyfae wrote: »
    And I said that they don't have to, but they can, so I don't know- that is not at all the same thing as "not knowing what's going on inside the building".

    Okay so we'll agree to differ.


  • #6734
    HermioneJean
    Closed Accounts Posts: 22 ✭HermioneJean


    As a parent I really insist on my kids wearing masks, this is a matter of public health its really important we are all in this together and not one or 2 bringing down a house of cards, so I asked everyone in the parent WhatsApp to do the same and they all agreed.

    and I know everything going on in the school. My youngest is in primary and I know everything going on, and if I have a question the school are always lovely and respond to me with a cheery update. I wouldn't feel safe if I didn't know the full range of measures being taken to protect our students, I demanded it from our parents Council and they had a video made showing us all. I couldn't comprehend sending kids in blind, I mean we had a full walk through the school twice in normal times, so with covid I'd want double that!!!!!!!!!


  • #6735
    NeuralNetwork
    Closed Accounts Posts: 727 ✭✭✭NeuralNetwork


    The HorsesMouth wrote: »
    Like...what to do you think teachers do all day? Are you working from home? Would you like it if next year your bosses said remember that time you were asked to work from home..yeah well we think productivity is down so we are cutting your holidays by 80% to make up for it or we are going to force you to take 80% or your holidays now.

    We might not be in the class(not our fault) but we are workings from home and (most of us) are doing the best we can.

    Actually you’ll find many, many businesses have reorganised holidays, moved people around and in a lot of cases they’ve shut entirely and left people on social welfare payments.

    I’m not suggesting you don’t take your holiday - but that you reorganise them so you and your students lives aren’t put at risk, but sure go off on a big rant instead.

    You wouldn’t be teaching remotely, you’d be on a much extended Easter holiday and then would have summer school time in lieu with a shorter holiday in August.

    Honestly if that is the kind of attitude that people have in a national emergency, I don’t know what to make of it.

    Plenty of other people in all sorts of contexts have turned their whole work lives upside down. Many don’t even have jobs anymore because of this mess.

    Businesses are closed, people are out of work, some people may be facing a future of being out of work for years after this.

    Don’t lecture me about work from home!

    Face to face teaching is a front line and difficult job. However, by reorganising the school year for one year, during a massive global pandemic, it’s quite possible to make it a whole lot safer and easier for all involved.

    Something like that would allow people to plan. It would keep teachers and students safer and most importantly it would put people in a position where they’re not dealing with a situation where an unvaccinated parent, grandparent, sibling etc of a teacher or student who has high risk of covid is terrified at home because someone be it a kid or a teacher has to go back to school.

    You’d open up time for the vaccine programme to have at least covered almost all of the most vulnerable before the doors of schools opened again. You could even ensure that teachers who wanted to be vaccinated were too.

    The worst case scenario (and a likely one) with the current plan is we reopen schools, with improved but still rather worrying high levels of community infection and with the U.K. varient making up 75% of Irish cases, with the vaccine programme only beginning to ramp up.

    Then we might get a spike of cases again leading to a shut down of education. That to me is a far worse outcome for kids who’ve already had at this stage two academic years messed up.

    It would be far preferable to have the whole thing moved to summer and have one “time shifted” year with risks minimised and a degree of certainly and safety that can’t be achieved by what’s being done at the moment.

    I honestly think we’re lacking real leadership on this and just going into a series of start/stop knee jerk responses that are just dragging a problem out.

    If we don’t start thinking outside the box we are doomed to cause a lot of people utter havoc.


  • #6736
    Lillyfae
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,858 ✭✭✭Lillyfae


    HermioneJean wrote: »
    and I know everything going on in the school. My youngest is in primary and I know everything going on, and if I have a question the school are always lovely and respond to me with a cheery update. I wouldn't feel safe if I didn't know the full range of measures being taken to protect our students, I demanded it from our parents Council and they had a video made showing us all. I couldn't comprehend sending kids in blind, I mean we had a full walk through the school twice in normal times, so with covid I'd want double that!!!!!!!!!

    How has this all of a sudden become a conversation about me not knowing what measures the school that my children go to have in place? Of course they have made us aware, we had daily updates in the week up to reopening. Added to that, we have daily photos and status updates via an app when they are in school even during normal times.

    A walk through the school during the Covid crisis, are you serious??


  • #6737
    HermioneJean
    Closed Accounts Posts: 22 ✭HermioneJean


    Lillyfae wrote: »
    How has this all of a sudden become a conversation about me not knowing what measures the school that my children go to have in place? Of course they have made us aware, we had daily updates in the week up to reopening. Added to that, we have daily photos and status updates via an app when they are in school even during normal times.

    A walk through the school during the Covid crisis, are you serious??

    A virtual walk through obviously, we don't want to increase any risk. I was just highlighting how I don't think there should be any "we don't know what the teachers are doing" stuff which you seemed to imply, that is all.

    And the schools have been so obliging. In fact they give us a weekly update too and link us to anything the government sends out and try to distill it for us. It's very very handy, and really makes us feel involved. Have to say they have been great, but I have to delete my twitter as I find there is no actual good information up there.


  • #6738
    Lillyfae
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,858 ✭✭✭Lillyfae


    HermioneJean wrote: »
    A virtual walk through obviously, we don't want to increase any risk. I was just highlighting how I don't think there should be any "we don't know what the teachers are doing" stuff which you seemed to imply, that is all.

    And the schools have been so obliging. In fact they give us a weekly update too and link us to anything the government sends out and try to distill it for us. It's very very handy, and really makes us feel involved. Have to say they have been great, but I have to delete my twitter as I find there is no actual good information up there.

    I said I don't know if they're wearing masks in the building- how would I know when the mask isn't mandatory, and I'm not going in to the building? I didn't saying anything about not knowing what the teachers are doing.

    I don't know why I'm surprised to be honest. If people can't be bothered to read a whole article and think the headline is enough, I shouldn't expect that they'd go back 2 pages and read what I actually said.


  • #6739
    SusanC10
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,432 ✭✭✭SusanC10


    HermioneJean wrote: »
    As a parent I really insist on my kids wearing masks, this is a matter of public health its really important we are all in this together and not one or 2 bringing down a house of cards, so I asked everyone in the parent WhatsApp to do the same and they all agreed.

    You asked all the other Parents of the other children in your child's Primary School Class to agree to have their kids wear masks in the classroom and they all agreed?
    That's great. We seem to have the full range of Parents in ours from the anti-vax to the ultra-cautious and everything in between!


  • #6740
    wirelessdude01
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,441 ✭✭✭wirelessdude01


    HermioneJean wrote: »
    As a parent I really insist on my kids wearing masks, this is a matter of public health its really important we are all in this together and not one or 2 bringing down a house of cards, so I asked everyone in the parent WhatsApp to do the same and they all agreed.

    You seriously asked all the other parents to have their kids wear masks?

    What ages are they?

    Now I personally think that all kids from 4th class up should be wearing them as standard in schools but I cannot ask them to.


  • #6741
    HermioneJean
    Closed Accounts Posts: 22 ✭HermioneJean


    wirelessdude01 wrote: »
    You seriously asked all the other parents to have their kids wear masks?

    What ages are they?

    Now I personally think that all kids from 4th class up should be wearing them as standard in schools but I cannot ask them to.

    At the start of the year after we had had our protocols from our school, we had a discussion in our group. They're are about 26 in my DDs class, and we discussed the merits and demerits of them. Long story short, 5 can't wear them as they have asthma, and the rest all agreed as long as we got assurances from the school about certain things, like going outside every hour,and lunch outside every day if it is not lashing rain. Every one seems happy and the teacher is very flexible and seems to understand everything.


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  • #6742
    BonsaiKitten
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,798 ✭✭✭BonsaiKitten


    wirelessdude01 wrote: »
    You seriously asked all the other parents to have their kids wear masks?

    What ages are they?

    Now I personally think that all kids from 4th class up should be wearing them as standard in schools but I cannot ask them to.

    Yep, this caused murder in a parents WhatsApp in my school. But that was probably more about the tone than the request as the parent in ours was very irate. The words "granny killers" were used more than once.


  • #6743
    HermioneJean
    Closed Accounts Posts: 22 ✭HermioneJean


    Lillyfae wrote: »

    I don't know why I'm surprised to be honest. If people can't be bothered to read a whole article and think the headline is enough, I shouldn't expect that they'd go back 2 pages and read what I actually said.

    Excuse me i bothered to read every post since I started posting here a few days ago. I read what you said and replied, am I not allowed? It would be good for you to ask the school about their mask policy, I'm sure every school has one and it's always good to know where all the policies are, they're usually on the website or in the homework journal.


  • #6744
    Birdy
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 124 ✭✭Birdy


    Aodhán Ó Riordán described the Department of Education & Skills as a 'dysfunctional Debs school committee' this morning. :D


  • #6745
    HermioneJean
    Closed Accounts Posts: 22 ✭HermioneJean


    BonsaiKitten wrote: »
    Yep, this caused murder in a parents WhatsApp in my school. But that was probably more about the tone than the request as the parent in ours was very irate. The words "granny killers" were used more than once.

    Oh that's awful. No we had a discussion about it. Some outlined their rationale but we came to an agreement, because we are adults. The main argument was if we could agree on food and entertainment at birthdays we could agree on a piece of cloth over a mouth for a bit of the day. Some people in other classes left the school but that was their choice too so. I will add the principal was at pains to stress that school had nothing to do with it, it was very funny, she was so worried!


  • #6746
    Lillyfae
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,858 ✭✭✭Lillyfae


    HermioneJean wrote: »
    Excuse me i bothered to read every post since I started posting here a few days ago. I read what you said and replied, am I not allowed? It would be good for you to ask the school about their mask policy, I'm sure every school has one and it's always good to know where all the policies are, they're usually on the website or in the homework journal.

    I've actually told you and others multiple times what the policy is in my last few posts. Not mandatory for under 12 years, not mandatory for the teachers in their own classrooms but no-one is stopping them.


  • #6747
    HermioneJean
    Closed Accounts Posts: 22 ✭HermioneJean


    Lillyfae wrote: »
    I've actually told you and others multiple times what the policy is in my last few posts. Not mandatory for under 12 years, not mandatory for the teachers in their own classrooms but no-one is stopping them.

    You said you didn't know, then you said not outside, but you didn't know. Then you mentioned secondary but not primary, so forgive me but when it takes 4posts for someone to make a point it gets a little difficult to keep up. This thread moves so fast it's heads pinning. How is it not mandatory for teachers in their classroom? It's mandatory for everyone indoors isn't it? That's very odd. No one is stopping them, why should anyone stop them, it's for public health, mask up! That's what all the YouTube ads tell me!!!!


  • #6748
    mloc123
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,454 ✭✭✭mloc123


    Lillyfae wrote: »
    How has this all of a sudden become a conversation about me not knowing what measures the school that my children go to have in place? Of course they have made us aware, we had daily updates in the week up to reopening. Added to that, we have daily photos and status updates via an app when they are in school even during normal times.

    A walk through the school during the Covid crisis, are you serious??

    The other poster is obviosly unstable... one of the many side effects of covid we have seen in the past year, people that previously appeared normal ending up like this.


  • #6749
    NeuralNetwork
    Closed Accounts Posts: 727 ✭✭✭NeuralNetwork


    Birdy wrote: »
    Aodhán Ó Riordán described the Department of Education & Skills as a 'dysfunctional Debs school committee' this morning. :D

    I think the most damaging aspect of the whole thing has been continuously planning for the best case scenario. They didn’t even put a plan in place for serious distance education. The Irish universities all did. The school systems in the USA all did. Many schools all over Europe did.

    The department of education here basically did a bit of mopping of floors from what I can see and hoped for the best.

    Realistically what’s been done here about ventilation for example? Have schools even been given larger heating allowances on a one off basis to allow them to open windows more comfortably?


  • #6750
    HermioneJean
    Closed Accounts Posts: 22 ✭HermioneJean


    mloc123 wrote: »
    The other poster is obviosly unstable... one of the many side effects of covid we have seen in the past year, people that previously appeared normal ending up like this.

    Who are you calling unstable? That's not very nice.


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  • #6751
    khalessi
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,216 ✭✭✭khalessi


    NeuralNetwork wrote: »
    I think the most damaging aspect of the whole thing has been continuously planning for the best case scenario. They didn’t even put a plan in place for serious distance education. The Irish universities all did. The school systems in the USA all did. Many schools all over Europe did.

    The department of education here basically did a bit of mopping of floors from what I can see and hoped for the best.

    Realistically what’s been done here about ventilation for example? Have schools even been given larger heating allowances on a one off basis to allow them to open windows more comfortably?

    We CO2 monitors and hepa filters in all classrooms and proper working windows would be a start


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