Schools to close again.. Covid

Is it a prerequisite of becoming ASTI president that you are absolutely incapable of coherent public speaking ? Newstalk this morning was an embarassment. He more or less made it sound like teachers will go on strike Thursday if schools are open which is absolutely not and should not be in the conversation .

The primary principal who followed on was excellent . Probably because he is actually working through this on the ground ………

Hspc guidelines were updated at the weekend

This would probably work fairly well, at least you could guarantee cover and see what the lay of the land is regarding the following week. I know a good few people isolating til the weekend but who could be back the following week and people picking it up seems to have dropped thankfully, but it's very hard to know what till happen in the next week or two, with boosters, a new varient, some herd immunity from the sheer scale of spread in the last month, a lot of unknowns.

Primary seems much tricker, you can play a bit of chess in secondary, send a class home early, bring them in late, you can even gamble a bit because bar the odd 1st or 2nd year they can generally make their own way home. Principals in primary must really be under pressure.

I'd imagine whatever happens today, many parents will not send kid in until after the weekend. I know my two step kids where in their dads since Stephens day and are home tomorrow. We won't be sending them until Monday as a precaution because they spent a fair bit of time in different households over the last week or so. We will antigen test over the weekend and make the decision about next week based on that. Luckily we've a 16 and a 10 year old so they are no hassle while we work from home. I do feel for those with younger kids and for people who cannot work from home.

JohnnyIreland i definitely would! Apologies if im not replying in the correct manner as am a bit lost with Boards these days.

Listening to Jonathan Healy this morning and the above point was made by the asti rep, Healy was like a dog with a bone asking him what asti will do if we are told it’s a full return on Thursday. Very obviously trying to goad him into a sound bite. He handled it well, but it made for an uncomfortable interview.

On your point about kids making their way home, we are a rural school, and a majority of our students would not be able to make their way home without buses or parents.

I think that because of online learning, our children may have a worse understanding of school subjects. In addition, children need teaching. I think that schools should not be closed because of the coronavirus. It's horrible. 

I'd think that school principals and boards want clear direction. They don't want to be left to decide on a 'school by school' basis. Otherwise when they make a decision to close, they'll get heat from both some parents and the dept.

Same boat as your self here!

Special schools are ideally set up to cope with this they should be allowed to return!

Most children in special schools have very little social contact outside of their school day its a crime if these schools remain shut!

Definitely would prefer to be back in the classroom with a full cohort of students. Bringing back Junior and Leaving Certs on Thursday will actually be much harder for teachers than brining back everyone...there will be an expectation to teach those classes in school, supervise for absent colleagues (fair enough) AND provide online tuition to those groups at home.

The problem is that there won't be a full cohort of students. Coming up to Christmas we had student absenteeism of about 25%. None of these students at home were being provided ANY type of education...this percentage will surely be higher over the next few weeks.

I'm not strongly campaigning for either scenario but the situation is so far from being black or white. Everyone will of course be beating the drum that suits them. The ISSU are coming out now and supporting a staggered return, the cynic in me would venture that this is part of a campaign to get further adjustments to papers/ calculated grades (again fair enough). Parents want the children in school for many reasons, many (maybe most) realise that for their mental health it is the place for them to be with online learning a poor replacement for in class teaching. Many also NEED the schools to be open for childcare (again fair enough). A small percentage of teachers would love to return to online learning and do very little. A percentage of students would love an extension to the Christmas holidays and won't engage in any online learning...

Not sure what point I'm trying to put really other than I suppose you can get upset at those in the black and white sections of the argument. Some of the abuse to teachers, the unions etc just seems ill informed, not helped by a union that can't articulate (or don't know) what they are fighting for really.

Has anyone watched the VFT webinar?

Im watching it at the minute and I find it bizarre… a woman on to talk about statistics, but giving anecdotal evidence, and now talk of how omicron is not more transmissible, we’re just not trying hard enough. I don’t know what they are playing at, and I haven’t even got to Gerry Killeen.

No I haven't. A page such as that sounds like fear-mongering if I'm being honest. I actually know few teachers who are on Facebook.

https://www.rte.ie/news/2022/0104/1269707-covid-schools/