And, a subject as perplexing as violence is the re-opening of schools - should children go back to the classroom even as COVID rages?
Well, the news tonight is that the Ministry of Education is pushing ahead to re-open schools as planned on October fourth. But, only 59 schools countrywide have sent in an application to open. That's the word from Education CEO Dian Maheia who this afternoon told us that the re-opening isn't mandatory and isn't all at once.
She spoke to Cherisse Halsall via Zoom this afternoon and broke down the criteria for the October 4th reopening of schools.
Dian Maheia, CEO, Ministry of Education
"October 4th is a start date but it is not the only start date in sight so not all schools will be returning on October 4th, schools can start to return as of October 4th tho, we are working with the October 4th deadline because that is the date that the Ministry of Health set when they were planning the rollout of the Pfizer vaccine, that is the date for which we were told that is a safe date for the students from 12-17 who will be getting vaccinated. So that's the date we're working, but what we are doing now is that we are in the process of receiving and reviewing applications from schools. Up to now we have 59 applications. Now, bear in mind if a school has for example a preschool, a primary school and a secondary school its count as 3, because we look at each one by level. That's what we are doing right now and I also want to explain to you that there's a criteria that we're looking at as we look. We are looking at 5 things; we are looking at the geographical location of the school, so obviously the covid numbers in that area. We are looking at the teacher vaccination status of the school, the student vaccination status of the school which obviously will vary, because if it's a primary school, it's going to be low, because it will only be the 1213 year old maybe who will be vaccinated. The 4th criteria we are looking at is the physical readiness of the campus for the students and the teachers to return. Is the campus ready with the relevant social distancing in place, the hand washing stations that sort of thing, the signage and then the 5th criteria we are looking at is actually a lot harder r measure and that's the community context for the school. In essence how much does the community need the school to start again."
