BERLIN (AP) – Under pressure to ease restrictions on Germany’s virus, officials agreed last month to gradually reopen schools. Confirmed cases of COVID-19 began to rise again, leading some states to back down, while others insisted that classroom teaching should be the rule.
Trapped in the middle are students, parents and teachers like Michael Gromotka, whose plans to teach art to his 7-9 year old students were disrupted last week when the state of Berlin canceled his return to school after months of remote learning.
“It was all very chaotic,” Gromotka said. “We received less than a week in advance.”
Gromotka, who is married to a classmate and has a son in primary school, says the return trip reflects the absence of a coherent strategy in Germany to keep schools open safely.
Berlin authorities bought about 1,900 air filters that experts say will reduce the risk of the virus spreading through classrooms. But the number available is only enough to supply each of the 900 schools in the capital with about two devices.
Berlin’s online teaching platform is so overcrowded during the day that some primary school students have to wait until 6.30pm to have their video classes. More reliable trading systems were rejected for privacy reasons.
And while Berlin now offers free tests for staff and students, no one needs to take them before going to school.
“Teachers are very concerned,” Gromotka told The Associated Press.
He launched a petition to demand that high school teachers be given priority in obtaining coronavirus vaccines, arguing that they deserve the same protection as elementary and kindergarten teachers because of the large number of students with whom they come into contact each week.
Like other educators, Gromotka says officials have not been able to learn the proper lessons for more than a year about the pandemic.
Figures released by the German disease control agency, the Robert Koch Institute, show that the number of confirmed weekly cases among children under 15 has doubled over the past month, as more children returned to schools and kindergartens.
The proposal to prioritize all teachers for vaccines, as Italy does, has garnered the support of some education unions.
“We can’t pretend that schools are isolated from the rest of society,” said Juergen Boehm, who chairs VDR, an association that represents some high school teachers from all over Germany.
The former principal says it is almost impossible to monitor dress codes and social distance in school corridors and buses, and that giving all millions of teachers in the country the shots to protect them from COVID-19 would mean “far fewer problems “.
Similarly, Boehm supports a system of regular compulsory tests – if necessary, with the help of the Red Cross or the army – and a firm threshold to return to online teaching in regions over 100 new. weekly cases per 100,000 inhabitants.
Many counties and cities already exceed this limit, which Chancellor Angela Merkel and the 16 state governors of Germany agreed should bring about an “emergency brake” on the loosest restrictions. But several states have insisted that schools should nevertheless remain open, arguing that it is in the best interest of children to go to school.
While Merkel meets Monday with governors to discuss expanding the closure measures, some state officials suggest that the threshold for closing schools and nursery schools should be up to 200 recently confirmed cases per week per 100,000 population.
So far, the government has said the German federal system can do little to enforce national standards for schools. As in the United States, education policy is primarily the responsibility of the 16 German states.
Boehm says he supports the principle of local control of schools, but believes there needs to be a clear rule for everyone in a situation like the pandemic.
Lothar Wieler, director of the Robert Koch Institute, said earlier this month that, from an infection control standpoint, “closing (schools) would, of course, be a good step.”
But he acknowledged that factors other than medical issues should also be taken into account and said classroom teaching could continue if “smart plans” were put in place to ensure it was safe.
The institute has proposed how this could be done with rigorous testing, mask doors and hygiene policies that would significantly reduce the risk of infection.
“You just have to implement it,” Wieler said.
Amid growing fears among tired parents that schools will close again soon, the federal government recently pushed for funding for school test kits, but refrained from imposing rules on how to use them.
“It’s the responsibility of states to organize this,” Merkel spokesman Steffen Seibert said.
German Family Minister Franziska Giffey said Monday that tests should also be done regularly on children in the nursery, given the increasing cases. He suggested that parents should be responsible for testing their own children.
Gromotka said teachers want schools to be safe and reliable, even if this is achieved, but that a good testing strategy and vaccinating all teachers would be a good way to start.
“Otherwise, I fear schools will soon have to close again, and that would be terrible for everyone involved,” he said.
___
Follow AP pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic, https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak.