As schools re­opened yes­ter­day, at least one sec­ondary school, Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege in San Fer­nan­do, is re­port­ing a 100 per cent vac­ci­na­tion rate among its staff.

Wel­com­ing stu­dents back to school af­ter the Christ­mas hol­i­days, prin­ci­pal Dex­ter Mitchell re­mind­ed and urged stu­dents to fol­low all COVID-19 pro­to­cols.

“As of the 3rd of Jan­u­ary all mem­bers of the teach­ing staff, civ­il ser­vice staff, Nalis, main­te­nance and se­cu­ri­ty are vac­ci­nat­ed so we have a 100 per cent staff vac­ci­nat­ed,” he told Guardian Me­dia.

How­ev­er, in his wel­com­ing re­marks to the stu­dents, the prin­ci­pal in­di­cat­ed that teach­ers had test­ed pos­i­tive.

“Al­ways be on your guard. Treat every per­son you en­counter as a pos­si­ble spread­er of the virus so we have to wear masks ap­pro­pri­ate­ly, ap­pro­pri­ate means cov­er­ing the nose and the mouth. We have to be phys­i­cal­ly dis­tanced as far as pos­si­ble. That’s why we have half of a class com­ing out so we could main­tain even be­yond that three feet that the min­istry talked about. We could main­tain a lit­tle more than that,” said Mitchell.

He al­so re­mind­ed stu­dents to san­i­tize and wear their masks at all times, un­less they are alone. “You want to en­sure that the school is a safe zone for both you and my­self. We have some mem­bers of staff who have test­ed pos­i­tive and they are home. Some are on leave of­fi­cial­ly. Some are feel­ing a lit­tle bet­ter and they said they will do on­line class­es and I said it’s up to them re­al­ly. That’s why we all have to main­tain all those pro­to­cols.”

Jerelle Thorne, a Form 5 stu­dent, said he was hap­py to be back out to school to see his friends. But, he said he was tak­ing the virus very se­ri­ous­ly as he is aware that while he may not get se­ri­ous­ly ill if he con­tracts the virus be­cause of his age, he could take the virus home to his old­er fam­i­ly mem­bers and “bad things might hap­pen.”

Mean­while, class­es will re­main vir­tu­al when tu­ition re­sumes at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (The UWI) on Jan­u­ary 17. This was con­firmed by Kobe Sandy, pres­i­dent of The UWI St Au­gus­tine (UWI-STA) Guild of Stu­dents, fol­low­ing his meet­ing on Mon­day with UWI-STA Prin­ci­pal, Pro­fes­sor Bri­an Copeland, to ad­dress ques­tions about the cam­pus’ phys­i­cal re­open­ing for Se­mes­ter Two.

“We agreed that it is im­pos­si­ble to bring all of the stu­dents—the whole cam­pus—back in full force be­cause of the dif­fi­cul­ty to man­age phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing,” he told Guardian Me­dia.

Sandy said af­ter the meet­ing, they were as­sured that there would be no full in-per­son class­es for this se­mes­ter at all. This fol­lowed a re­lease by the Guild, in which they asked whether the cam­pus would re­open to all stu­dents. They said they need­ed at least three months’ no­tice to pre­pare and al­so asked for bet­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion. While there are stu­dents who may have to phys­i­cal­ly at­tend class­es be­cause of the na­ture of their pro­grammes, Sandy said vir­tu­al class­es will con­tin­ue un­til fur­ther no­tice for the wider stu­dent pop­u­la­tion.

Present­ly, phys­i­cal class­es have re­sumed on­ly for Forms Four to Six stu­dents while the oth­ers are be­ing taught via the on­line plat­form. On De­cem­ber 22, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion an­nounced the phas­ing-in of more stu­dents back to phys­i­cal school.

Mean­while, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said there were no ma­jor in­ci­dents re­port­ed to the min­istry re­gard­ing the re­open­ing of schools yes­ter­day. How­ev­er, she was still await­ing the at­ten­dance da­ta sent in by prin­ci­pals up to yes­ter­day af­ter­noon. Na­tion­al Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Zena Ra­matali and Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent An­to­nia Tekah De­Fre­itas al­so had no com­plaints from their mem­bers.