An­na-Lisa Paul and

Rishard Khan

Al­though it has on­ly been one week since schools re­sumed face-to-face class­es, par­ents are re­port­ing grow­ing anx­i­ety and ap­pre­hen­sion, as they say they are be­ing forced to de­cide on en­sur­ing their chil­dren get an ed­u­ca­tion but at the risk of their phys­i­cal safe­ty.

An­gry af­ter learn­ing that two pupils had been sent home from her son’s pri­ma­ry school in To­ba­go on Mon­day and on Tues­day af­ter ex­hibit­ing flu-like symp­toms, one moth­er said the lack of fur­ni­ture had re­sult­ed in pupils hav­ing to sit three to a desk. This close prox­im­i­ty, she said, re­sult­ed in more pupils hav­ing to be quar­an­tined.

Asked if she now in­tend­ed to keep her son at home to avoid him con­tract­ing the virus, she said while the de­ci­sion is a painful one, it could save his life.

“There are two op­tions open to me. To have my child un­safe at school or un­e­d­u­cat­ed at home,” she said.

Say­ing she was ready to se­cure his health with her own mon­ey, the moth­er added, “I would like to buy a bench for him to sit in, but I am be­ing told that we have to get per­mis­sion from the min­istry to do that…I have no prob­lem buy­ing it but the is­sue is get­ting per­mis­sion now.”

Re­quest­ing anonymi­ty for fear of vic­tim­i­sa­tion, many of the par­ents and teach­ers Guardian Me­dia spoke to ex­pressed doubts about how the cur­rent sys­tem for re­port­ing COVID-19 out­breaks in schools was set up.

At a school in south Trinidad, one teacher said, “There is no sani­ti­sa­tion with­in the school dur­ing the day, which is care­less.”

Tasked with man­ag­ing one of the low­er class­es, the teacher said this co­hort of stu­dents was prov­ing hard­er to con­trol in terms of health and safe­ty and as such, greater ef­fort is need­ed to clean desks and com­mon ar­eas.

Con­cern­ing re­cess and lunch breaks, she said, “The chil­dren are not giv­en any re­cess to go out­side at all.

“The min­istry pro­posed a con­trolled sys­tem…but that is not fol­lowed at my school.

“No one is giv­en a chance to have re­cess and at lunch time, a lot of kids are asked to go back to their class­rooms. The kids are com­plain­ing now, as they can­not even stretch their legs and en­joy some fresh air.”

Not­ing there were not enough per­son­nel to su­per­vise the stu­dents, the teacher re­port­ed feel­ing dis­ap­point­ed over the cur­rent arrange­ment.

Com­ment­ing on the to­tal re­moval of the on­line modal­i­ty, the teacher said when they too fall ill, their stu­dents are go­ing to suf­fer.

In the ab­sence of on­line class­es, the teacher ques­tioned what would be­come of stu­dents and their ed­u­ca­tion when one or more of the teach­ers test pos­i­tive and/or have to be quar­an­tined.

In ad­di­tion, par­ents have been com­plain­ing about the lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion by school of­fi­cials, as they re­port­ed sit­u­a­tions of stu­dents be­ing sent home from school af­ter turn­ing up with flu-like symp­toms.

The moth­er of a sev­en-year-old girl at­tend­ing a de­nom­i­na­tion­al pri­ma­ry school in east Trinidad said, “My daugh­ter went back to school last week hap­py and healthy. In her class, they were as­signed seats and told not to shift un­less the teacher moved them, so for con­tact trac­ing pur­pos­es, this made sense.

“One day lat­er, a stu­dent who sat next to her was said to have flu-like symp­toms but I was nev­er con­tact­ed nor in­formed of this by the school.”

The anx­ious woman added, “I on­ly found out when my daugh­ter said the girl had not come back to class and when I en­quired why, she couldn’t say.

“I called some oth­er par­ents and found out the child might have been ill, so that was how I knew. Up to now…the school has yet to call me and say what hap­pened and if I should be mon­i­tor­ing my daugh­ter or if I should get her test­ed.”

NAPSPA meets

The Na­tion­al Pri­ma­ry Schools Prin­ci­pals As­so­ci­a­tion (NAPSPA) will meet on Wednes­day in an emer­gency ses­sion to dis­cuss the is­sue of the lack of re­port­ing pro­to­cols in schools.

NAPSPA pres­i­dent Car­lene Hayes said, “We need to get some sort of mech­a­nism for re­port­ing.”

Un­able to com­ment on re­ports of out­breaks and pro­vide an ac­cu­rate as­sess­ment of what is tak­ing place in pri­ma­ry schools, she said they were get­ting in­for­ma­tion in the me­dia.

“As of now, we don’t have the amount of cas­es but what we know is that there are cas­es and cas­es have been tak­ing place since school re­opened last week,” she said.

With over 450 pri­ma­ry schools in Trinidad, Hayes said chil­dren be­tween the ages of five and eight, “do not un­der­stand to wear the mask.”

Beg­ging par­ents to be re­spon­si­ble and keep their kids at home if they are ill or ex­hib­it flu-like symp­toms, she added, “The on­ly way this can work, that we can con­tin­ue to stay open, is that is chil­dren are ill, they keep the home.”

Claim­ing par­ents were ex­er­cis­ing their right to send their kids to school af­ter two years of keep­ing them at home – Hayes said in terms of pro­to­cols, “Prin­ci­pals’ hands are tied.”

She said apart from en­sur­ing clean­ers sani­tise reg­u­lar­ly with the rel­e­vant clean­ing agents and chem­i­cals, schools were strapped for funds and un­able to car­ry out deep clean­ing mea­sures.

Prin­ci­pal tells par­ents do the right thing

In a let­ter to par­ents on Tues­day, the prin­ci­pal of a de­nom­i­na­tion­al pri­ma­ry school in east Trinidad ap­pealed to par­ents to do the right thing and keep their chil­dren home if they were ex­hibit­ing flu-like symp­toms or had been in con­tact with any­one who test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID.

He wrote, “School has re-opened and we are do­ing our ut­most best to en­sure the safe­ty of all pupils and staff mem­bers. To this end, we re­ly on par­ents be­ing ex­treme­ly re­spon­si­ble as well. With­in the last week, we have had cause to send home a few pupils, as par­ents are send­ing them to school with flu-like symp­toms.

“Pupils are com­ing to school even though they are in con­tact with fam­i­ly mem­bers who are ill ...

“I am plead­ing with par­ents to keep pupils who are not well at home. The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s po­si­tion on this is very clear. Pupils who have flu-like symp­toms must be tak­en to the doc­tor and a med­ical clear­ance be is­sued by a reg­is­tered med­ical prac­ti­tion­er and sent to the school be­fore the pupil can re­turn to school.”

NPTA: We’re very con­cerned

Na­tion­al Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA) pres­i­dent Kevin David said while they were not against the re­open­ing of schools, they are con­cerned about COVID spread­ing amongst the stu­dent pop­u­la­tions.

He too ap­pealed to par­ents to fol­low guide­lines and pro­to­cols and re­main vig­i­lant about symp­toms their chil­dren were dis­play­ing.

Re­fer­ring to the space con­straints in many schools, he said they will be dis­cussing this with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion when they meet soon.

David cau­tioned against call­ing for a shut-down of schools, as it will have far-reach­ing con­se­quences. How­ev­er, he said per­haps it was time to re-vis­it the op­tion of im­ple­ment­ing a hy­brid sys­tem, as the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion was very se­ri­ous and re­quired ur­gent ac­tion.