And while the Covid numbers continue their upward climb, Belize's Ministry of Education hasn't wavered from its plan to re-open schools on Monday.
And for one Belize City school, that safe reopening will be nearly impossible without at least two more school wardens.
It's a need that Wesley lower's Vice-Principal Pamela Baird made an urgent plea to fill this morning when she appeared to talk school and Covid resilience on Sunup on 7:
Pamela Baird - Vice Principal, Wesley Lower
"I want to call on the Ministry of education to kindly give Wesley Lower the two school wardens that we are short of because currently we only have one school warden at the school and she is at the front gate and then between myself and the principal we have to be back and forth at the back gate because we have different entrances and exists for the various classes. So we have the infant one and the infant two students coming in from the front and when the parents bring them they are not allowed on the compound. So they need to just drive the students at the gate, the first procedure is for the child to go the wash hand stand, sanitize and go directly to your classroom. For standard 1, 2 and 3 the entrance is the back gate and we have designated stairs that each class has to go on and so these parents are already apprised of all of this, we have send all the schedules to them and at Wesley lower we are doing the shift system, so we have morning and afternoon shifts and so we are only accommodating 50% of the population at any given time. So, if a class has 24 students, then in the morning, the teacher will be seeing 12 and in the afternoon she will be seeing the other 12. So, that makes it a little bit better in terms of monitoring because it's a smaller amount and so they'll be able to have a better grip on who is going to the bathroom and instead of looking at 24, only having to look at 12, so again we are calling on the ministry of education we have written to them about, they are aware of it, we need really need these school wardens because as administrators, myself and the principal, we cannot do our jobs if we have to be doing the school wardens job as well."
You can see the full segment on the Sunup on 7 Youtube page.
Wesley Lower had a minor COVID outbreak last year and has since developed strategies to work through such events in the interest of keeping their students in the classroom.
