BERLIN (AP) – Under pressure to ease restrictions on Germany’s virus, officials agreed last month to gradually reopen schools. The cases confirmed by COVID-19 began to rise again, prompting some states to withdraw while others insisted that classroom teaching should be the rule.
In the middle are students, parents and teachers like Michael Gromotka, whose plans to teach art to his 7-9 students were overturned last week, when the state of Berlin canceled his return to school after months of distance learning.
“It was all very chaotic,” Gromotka said. “We have less than a week’s notice.”
Gromotka, who is married to a fellow teacher and has a child in primary school, says back and forth reflects the lack of a coherent strategy in Germany for how to keep schools open safely.
Authorities in Berlin have purchased about 1,900 air filters, which experts say will reduce the risk of the virus spreading in classrooms. However, the number available is enough to provide each of the 900 schools in the capital with about two devices.
Berlin’s online teaching platform is so overloaded during the day that some elementary school students have to wait until 6:30 pm to have video lessons. More reliable trading systems have been rejected due to privacy issues.
And, although Berlin now offers free tests for staff and students, it is not necessary for anyone to take them before going to school.
“Teachers are incredibly worried,” Gromotka told The Associated Press.
He launched a petition calling for high school teachers to be given priority when it comes to coronavirus vaccines, saying they deserve the same protection as elementary school and kindergarten teachers because of the large number of students they enter. in contact every week.
Like other educators, Gromotka says officials have failed to learn the right lessons more than a year after the pandemic.
Figures released by the German Disease Control Agency, the Robert Koch Institute, show the number of confirmed cases per week among people under the age of 15 more than doubled in the last month, as more children returned to schools and kindergartens. .
The proposal to give priority to all vaccination teachers, as Italy does, has won the support of education unions.
“We can’t pretend that schools are isolated from the rest of society,” said Juergen Boehm, who runs VDR, an association that represents high school teachers across Germany.
The former principal says it is almost impossible to keep the rules of dress and social distance in school halls and buses and that giving one million teachers in the country shots to protect them from COVID-19 would mean “far fewer problems”.
Likewise, Boehm supports a regular mandatory testing system – if necessary, with the help of the Red Cross or the army – and a firm threshold to return to online teaching in regions that exceed 100 new cases per 100,000 inhabitants.
Many counties and cities are already exceeding this limit, which Chancellor Angela Merkel and the 16 German state governors have agreed should trigger an “emergency brake” on weaker restrictions. But several states have insisted that schools must remain open, arguing that it is in the best interests of children to go to school.
Merkel meets again with governors on Monday to discuss extension of blocking measures, some state officials suggest that the threshold for closing schools and kindergartens should be up to 200 newly confirmed cases per week per 100,000 inhabitants.
So far, the government has said it can do nothing in Germany’s federal system to enforce national rules for schools. As in the United States, education policy is largely the responsibility of the 16 German states.
Boehm says he supports the principle of local control of schools, but believes there should be a clear rule for everyone in a situation like a pandemic.
Lothar Wieler, head of the Robert Koch Institute, said earlier this month that, from an infection control perspective, “closing (schools) would, of course, be a good step.”
But he acknowledged that factors other than medical concerns should be considered and said teaching in the classroom could continue if “smart plans” are implemented to ensure it is safe.
The institute proposed how this could be achieved through rigorous testing, wearing a mask and hygiene policies that would significantly reduce the risk of infection.
“It just needs to be implemented,” Wieler said.
Amid growing fears among parents that schools will be closed again soon, the federal government recently stepped up funding for school test kits, but refrained from imposing rules on how to use them.
“It is the responsibility of states to organize this,” said Merkel spokesman Steffen Seibert.
German Minister for Families Franziska Giffey said on Monday that children in kindergarten should also be tested regularly, given the growing cases there. She suggested that parents should be responsible for testing their own children.
Gromotka said teachers want schools to be safe and reliable, however this is being done, but that a clear testing strategy and vaccination of all teachers would be good ways to start.
“Otherwise, I’m afraid schools will have to close again soon and that would be awful for everyone involved,” he said.
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