Worried about the reopening of schools

Oct 15, 2020 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,

Permit me to share my opinion with school reopening possibly for grades 10 and 11. I have noticed in the media that the Ministry of Education and the GTU are having talks on the possibility of reopening of schools in Guyana. It concerns me as a parent and teacher. Sometime in September 2020, a note was dispatched to head teachers to indicate which of their teachers are interested in returning to school for face to face meeting. For our school, it generated little interest. I can’t understand why the government would be asking teachers of their opinion when it is clear they don’t want to make the call on opening. They are using teachers as scapegoats because if there is an outbreak, which is bound to happen, the MOE will take itself clean out and say it was the teachers who asked to return to school. Younger generation teachers will most likely indicate a return. But those who are elderly and those with medical conditions will be fearful. This is a life and death situation for them and besides if they caught the virus at school, it will be taken to their homes. Amazingly, there are no consultations with the teachers on their opinions. They are just left in the dark while the uncaring MOE is pushing to have the teachers’ lives at risk. Just look at the number of teachers in Region One who caught the virus earlier in the year and I understand that they were distributing hampers. The vast majority of students use public transportation to get to school. The catchment area is wide for the schools. They can easily pick up the virus and bring it to school and spread it silently. The mask wearing and social distancing in minibus is a disaster, should we put our children in the realm of public transport? Who will see the children change their masks regularly and where will they get a mask to change regularly? Is mask wearing for extended use safe? It is a well known fact that children don’t really show symptoms of COVID and so they can be super spreaders. In Canada, teachers were asked to do either face to face or online teaching. Schools reopened and for schools, which opted for face to face or a combination of both, they are now faced with outbreaks in several schools in Ontario. Schools are closing again in Northern Ireland, in New York, Czech Republic, France, Essex in the UK because of alarming outbreaks. There are many other cases around the world where the opening of schools has lead to massive outbreaks and there are now rushing to close again. The Government of Guyana cannot control the case load of the virus currently, will they be able to handle it when there are thousands of cases? Our fellow CARICOM countries are not taking this gamble to open schools but Guyana with limited capacity is on this destructive path. I personally feel that the Government has not been handling the pandemic well in Guyana. They will and must take the blame for their uncaring actions.

Concerned Parent and Teacher

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