BERLIN (AP) – Under pressure to ease restrictions on Germany’s viruses, authorities agreed last month to gradually reopen schools. Confirmed cases of COVID-19 began to rise again, prompting some states to backtrack while others insisted and insisted that classroom teaching should be the norm.
Caught in the middle are students, parents and teachers like Michael Gromotka, whose plans to teach art to his 7- to 9-year-old students were interrupted last week when the state of Berlin banned his return to school after months of remote learning.
“It was all very chaotic,” said Gromotka. “We received less than a week’s notice.”
Gromotka, who is married to a fellow teacher and has a son in primary school, says the comings and goings reflect the absence of a coherent strategy in Germany to keep schools open safely.
The authorities in Berlin have bought about 1,900 air filters that, experts say, will reduce the risk of the virus spreading in classrooms. But the number available is sufficient only to supply 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 their video lessons. More reliable business systems have been rejected for privacy reasons.
And while Berlin now offers free tests for staff and students, there is no requirement that anyone take them before going to school.
“Teachers are extremely concerned,” Gromotka told The Associated Press.
He launched a petition demanding that high school teachers have priority in vaccination against coronavirus, arguing that they deserve the same protection as teachers in elementary school and kindergarten due to the large number of students with whom they come into contact with all. the weeks.
Like other educators, Gromotka says the authorities have not learned the right lessons more than a year after the pandemic began.
Figures published by the German disease control agency, the Robert Koch Institute, show that the number of confirmed weekly cases among children under 15 more than doubled last month as more children returned to schools and daycare centers.
The proposal to prioritize all teachers for vaccination, as Italy is doing, has won the support of some education unions.
“We cannot pretend that schools are isolated from the rest of society,” said Juergen Boehm, who chairs VDR, an association that represents some high school teachers across Germany.
The former principal says that it is almost impossible to police the use of masks and the rules of social distance in school and bus corridors, and that giving all 1 million teachers in the country the vaccines to protect them from COVID-19 would mean “Much less problems”.
Likewise, Boehm supports a system of regular mandatory testing – if necessary, with the help of the Red Cross or the army – and a firm limit to return to online education in regions that reach 100 new weekly cases per 100,000 inhabitants.
Many counties and cities have already exceeded this limit, which Chancellor Angela Merkel and Germany’s 16 state governors have agreed to apply an “emergency brake” for more flexible restrictions. But several states have insisted that schools should remain open, arguing that it is in the interests of children to go to school.
As Merkel meets again with governors on Monday to discuss the extent of blocking measures, some state officials are suggesting that the limit for the closure of schools and kindergartens should reach 200 new confirmed cases per week for every 100,000 inhabitants.
So far, the government has said there is little to do under the German federal system to enforce national school rules. As in the United States, educational policy is largely attributed to the 16 German states.
Boehm says he supports the principle of local school control, but thinks there needs to 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 the point of view of infection control, “closing (schools) would be a good step.”
But he acknowledged that factors other than medical issues should also be considered, and said that classroom teaching could continue if “smart plans” were put in place to ensure it was safe.
The institute proposed how this could be done with rigorous testing, wearing a mask and hygiene policies that would significantly reduce the risk of infection.
“It just needs to be implemented,” said Wieler.
Amid growing fears among tired parents that schools will be closed again soon, the federal government recently increased funding for school test kits, but refrained from imposing rules on how to use them.
“It is the responsibility of the states to organize this,” said Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert.
Germany’s family minister, Franziska Giffey, said on Monday that kindergarten children should also be tested regularly, due to the increase in cases there. She suggested that parents should be responsible for testing their own children.
Gromotka said that teachers want schools to be safe and reliable, regardless of how this is achieved, but that a clear test strategy and vaccinating all teachers would be a good way to start.
“Otherwise, I fear that schools will soon have to close again, and that would be terrible for everyone involved,” he said.
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