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Franco Bechis
In the end, it seems that common sense prevailed and perhaps also the pressure of those who agreed with our appeals, and with good reason the institutes will not be reopened uselessly before Christmas: the risk of making a massacre multiplying the infections of parents and children. Thanks to the lunches and dinners, grandparents would have been very high and even the Minister of Education, Lucía Azzolina, who still does not want to give up (she is still excited about the reopening on December 14), will be forced to take note. The danger therefore escaped, with the reopening of all schools of all levels after the Christmas holidays, starting on January 7, 2021. The European Commission in its recommendations to national governments advises against this date as well, suggesting that the vacation be extended to another two weeks or, alternatively, continue for those additional 15 days with distance learning. He says it with the hope – which we all have – that the second wave of the virus will be extinguished and the first doses of vaccines will arrive to combat it. But these conditions are not necessarily fulfilled in January, and so the question remains the one that we highlighted when asking us to be quiet before Christmas: what is being done to be able to reopen the school safely? The answer is, unfortunately, the same that could have been given this summer: nothing.
Therefore, I must deduce that, in addition to filling their mouths with empty slogans, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, Azzolina, their fellow ministers and the leaders of their majority of children in school do not give a damn. Otherwise, they would be there to work from morning to night to agree with the school workers on a reopening plan that stacks the tickets at different times, also using the afternoon to teach. And in the different decrees of provisioning they would have inserted immediate endowments of hundreds of millions of euros (there are some absolutely insufficient coins in the budget law, but not necessary for January) to distribute them to the Regions and local authorities in order to strengthen even with the rent. the school transport network from private media, differentiating it as much as possible from that available to other working citizens.
It is the only way to lower the percentage of filling of public transport, because it is clear that filling up to 80% of the capacity adopted since September has been a multiplier of the virus. Clearly, if nothing is done to reduce the risk of returning to the classroom, it is because the red-yellow leaders do not want to reopen the schools as they say: it is just propaganda. After having denied even against all logic that this transport-school mix had been the engine of the second wave of the virus, they should have surrendered to the irrefutable data periodically published by the epidemiological surveillance bulletins of the Higher Institute of Health. As we had well explained to Il Tempo readers, infections in the school population (0-19 years) had increased by 1,073.10% between August 25 and November 7, double, triple and even five times than in the other age groups of the population. When secondary schools were closed on November 6 and distance education in the red areas also involved second and third level secondary schools, the growth of infections in the school population collapsed. Between November 7 and 18, it went from first to fifth place in the ranking by age groups. Between November 18 and 25, it fell back to seventh place and growth was lower only in the 90+ group. How to open the school without any security in September was the unfortunate decision that started the second wave of the virus, closing it was the movement that slowed down and now the contagion curve is even reversing. We only know since last night, thanks to the publication of the minutes of the technical scientific committee as always late, that the consulting teachers had been involved in a real tug of war with the government about the security that was lacking in the school operation. So much so that on October 17 (when the institutes were still open) the request to adopt “staggered admission schedules in the presence of university and secondary students” was registered. And not only that. In fact, the CTS writes: “An important criticality is represented by local public transport that does not seem to have adapted to the renewed needs, despite the fact that the CTS highlighted the need for a reorganization since last April, promoting a different mobility with the active participation of local management and mobility institutions “.
Thus it was from April that the CTS had asked to review the local transport network before reopening the schools, but in almost six months neither Azzolina nor her colleague Paola De Micheli did anything, setting fire to the dust of the second wave. As then, even now they do not deal with it, despite new appeals. And therefore the substance will not change even in January: without the necessary safety conditions, even then it will be insane to bring the children back to class.
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