Sure it’s heartbreaking and tricky, but reopening schools as planned next Monday is the right thing to do.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
It is heartbreaking and delicate above all because it may seem to go against the strategy put forward since the beginning of this crisis: to reduce contact.
It’s heartbreaking and delicate, too, because the conditions in the school system are far from ideal.
But it was a matter of arbitrating between different objectives, keeping in mind that we should not only seek to prevent our children from being infected by a virus against which they are the most resistant.
While their parents continue to limit their contact to curb the spread of the virus, children must go back to school because they have the right to be educated, to continue their learning and development and to return to this life. of which they have been deprived for too long since the start of the pandemic.
They have to go back to school because we have seen with dismay the distress that seizes a large number of them when their normal life is put on hold for too long.
Their health is at stake.
of their well-being.
They have to go back to school, too, because that is one of the essential components of a change in strategy, whereby one has to gradually learn to live with this virus.
Schools are reopening almost everywhere else in North America, for that matter.
“We have to manage the disease differently,” declared this week the president of the Federation of Medical Specialists of Quebec, Vincent Oliva, to our journalist Ariane Lacoursière.
He is right. And that’s not just for the healthcare system, but for our schools too.
The dominant variant having changed – it is more contagious, but less virulent – and vaccines having long since proven their effectiveness, it is no longer the same pandemic.
The monster is weakened and our shields are stronger.
Reopening primary and secondary schools on January 17 is therefore a logical choice.
However, we are not going to err on the side of naivety here.
Let’s say it: it’s not going to be easy.
And that does not mean that we should not follow very, very closely the transmission among young people and that which, in the community, will be linked to it.
It was recently reported that the contagion in specialized schools, where lessons are already given, is worrying.
Finally, that does not mean either that we would not have liked the Legault government to do more to ensure that this return to school goes as well as possible under the circumstances.
Additional efforts could have been made in recent months, but also in recent days.
We cannot say, for example, that we have tackled the problem of ventilation in schools head-on. We have made some progress since the start of the pandemic, it is true, but slowly and painfully.
We also think of vaccination: couldn’t we have orchestrated targeted campaigns targeting certain regions where young people are still under-vaccinated?
And redouble our efforts, moreover, to provide rapid tests to all primary and secondary school students. Yes, there will be… but not at the start of the school year.
Finally, we also think of the N95 masks, which will be distributed to schools and specialized classes. Even if their effectiveness in a school context is still debated, we could also have offered them to all teachers who ask for them.
The feeling of insecurity, mentioned by the unions, should not be taken lightly.
All of these grievances expressed by various actors in the network are important and valid.
These problems still urgently need to be addressed.
However, the baby should not be thrown out with the bathwater.
We can deplore the failures in crisis management and continue to demand more tools from teachers, staff and school administrators without, however, further compromising the well-being of our children.